As someone who has been calling for the World Health Organisation to be reformed or replaced for years, Donald Trump’s decision to halt its funding gives me hope.

Those who are outraged by it should remember that the WHO accepts personal donations and dip their hands in their pocket. This applies especially to countries such as France, Spain, Italy, Finland and Ireland, whose combined contributions to the WHO’s general fund in 2018 amounted to less than five per cent of the USA’s.

In an ideal world, other big donors such as the UK would threaten to withhold funding until they are given an assurance that the Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, will resign and the agency will undergo a root and branch review. The WHO should promise to drop its obsessions with political correctness and the nanny state and return to its core mission of tackling infectious disease without fear or favour.

That may be too much to ask right now, but Trump’s decision has kept the spotlight on this rotten organisation and made reform more likely. As I wrote last week, there is no chance of the WHO mending its ways unless there is a credible threat of the money drying up.