How The World Health Organization (WHO) Funds

Illustration (Pixabay)

JAKARTA - President Donald Trump has stopped funding for the World Health Organization (WHO). The reason is that Trump considers WHO to be biased towards China during the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. This then shook the WHO's financial condition. The reason is, the US is the institution's largest donor.

Trump's withdrawal of funds from the WHO at a time of the pandemic sparked an international public reaction. World leaders as well as political rivals at home have called Trump rash, irresponsible and likely to underestimate the coronavirus when the first warnings emerged.

Seeing the news on Fox News, Trump's decision on WHO budget restrictions is inviolable. Even though Trump has been persuaded by WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Chinese side and private donors to reconsider his decision.

Many say the result of the withdrawal of funding will shake WHO's finances and have an impact on the agency's efforts to combat, not only the ongoing COVID-19, but also a list of other deadly diseases including ebola, malaria, cancer, diabetes and polio.

But WHO is not standing still. They and their partners will think about how to fill the empty funding posts and ensure that what they are currently working on is not too affected.

It was true, the "rescue team" will always be around. One of the WHO's biggest supporters, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, announced that they would increase their donation by US $ 150 million to fight the new coronavirus pandemic.

As explained in its release , in February the foundation founded by Microsoft's boss had pledged 100 million US dollars for this pandemic. So that the total funds of 250 million US dollars provided by the foundation will be used to support the development of diagnosis, treatment and vaccines. In addition, the money they donate will be used to strengthen African and South Asian health systems.

WHO Financial Resources

As explained by Fox News , based on the biennial budget for 2020 and 2021, the budget for carrying out its mission is $ 4.8 billion. Meanwhile, WHO funding sources are divided into two categories, each of which is uneven.

The first category, funding comes from contributions from each WHO member country. The amount is adjusted to the population and state income. As for the second category, comes from voluntary donations including extra money given by the government and private donations. Sources of funds from the first category only cover 20 percent of the total budget. The remainder was covered by voluntary donations.

Then who is the biggest donor? None other than the United States. Uncle Sam's country contributes at least 20 percent of the total WHO budget.

Of the mandatory dues, the US has deposited approximately 237 million US dollars or about 22 percent of the total funding for the membership contribution category. In comparison, China, only pays 12 percent of the mandatory budget, followed by Japan 8.6 percent and Germany 6.1 percent.

Meanwhile, the second largest donor from the category of voluntary donations to WHO is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which paid around US $ 531 million. Then the third is the GAVI world vaccine alliance. Institutions that focus on increasing immunization to poor countries. GAVI spent at least around 370 million US dollars to WHO.