to wonder what WHO is supposed to be for

[Monty27]

It seems they had no clout to order members how to proceed and have very little power for joined up commitment to fight the pandemic notwithstanding find a vaccine
I'm prepared to be flamed but just asking.

They function like all other UN bodies, at the mercy of their members.

Well yes. So what are they for?

Eradicating smallpox ?

Have you tried googling it? Might be a bit more informative than random individuals on MN.

@31Lockheart I suppose I'm going to have to read up on it. FFS it probably costs a freaking fortune to run and they're merely advisory at best. Jeez I despair

@28DGRossetti

They are a world information and advisory body.

They do what PHE etc does n a global scale!

www.who.int/about/role/en/

Their biggest funder was, until very recently, the USA, then the Bill and Belinda Gates, the the UK, as a whole.

www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/who-funds-world-health-organization-un-coronavirus-pandemic-covid-trump/

They advise. We don't have to do what they say but most of the time we really should

They are the only advisory body with international communication. The Australian Rudd was on the radio this am saying they should have some clout to call for sanctions if for example a country fails to report issues early enough. Not sure I would go that far as some of their advice is debatable eg baby weaning. US is a huge contributer ? should have withdrawn funding or not?

"Other countries are stepping up their own financial support for the organization. The UK, for example, has announced £200 million in new funding for international efforts to contain and combat the pandemic, including £65 million for the WHO."

Yet our local school and community are making PPE for local care homes?

Is that you Donald?

What has research and data analysis got to do with making PPE?

We need both. The WHO does the former

At the moment it's a candidate for Trump's frantic scapegoatism. Having failed to appoint a representative to it because he didn't think it was of any importance to the USA - thus letting China fill the void - he's now blaming it for not doing what it was supposed to do and would have been able to do better if he had been engaged with it from the start.

FFS it probably costs a freaking fortune to run and they're merely advisory at best. Jeez I despair

I think this is a problem of not understanding the size of numbers. Their budget is $ 4.8 billion a year. It's a "freaking fortune". Except it isn't. The budget of the NHS is around $200 billion. Apparently, Americans spend $20 billion a year on Valentines Day.

It is an international body with a limited budget that can provide guidance, that is especially useful for poorer countries, but as others have pointed out, it is at the control of its donors.

I find Trump's take on the WHO baffling. On one hand, he thinks China has too big a role in it, on the other hand, he's reluctant to engage in multilateralism. What exactly does he think will happen when the US withdraws from such bodies? It's a bit like leaving your partner and then complaining when they meet someone new.

Maybe you should make the effort to learn more about what they do before dismissing them as pointless? It would be one thing if you were well informed on the subject and then formed an opinion, but deciding they’re useless and lazily asking MN posters to confirm your suspicions seems a bit...small minded?

There was a major WHO report on the outbreak in China, which has formed the basis of international response.

It's a key document. There were US scientists in the team of researchers.

The role in coordinating and international responses, highlighting research gaps (to reduce duplication) and setting out the ways known to break transmission chains will have saved many lives globally

Read this from the Guardian, OP. It should answer your questions.
www.theguardian.com/news/2020/apr/10/world-health-organization-who-v-coronavirus-why-it-cant-handle-pandemic

I find Trump's take on the WHO baffling.

You shouldn't. Because it's like his take on everything. To him (and a lot of Americans from my experience of living there) the world outside America owes AMERICA... for being America. It just does.
America has a real problem understanding the fact that not everyone thinks their country is as wonderfully perfect as most Americans seem to think it is.

They fund healthcare worldwide. The organisation I work for receives a lot of funding from them for neonatal medicine and incubators, for example.