A trio of public health and medical professionals making the rounds on the Sunday morning news shows called for President Donald Trump not to defund the World Health Organization as the administration weighs punitive measures on the public health organization.

White House aides and Trump are debating several far-reaching moves to target the WHO in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, POLITICO reported Friday, including cutting off U.S. funding and trying to create an alternative institution.


“I don't think this is a time to defund the WHO, given the fact that I think this is going to become an epidemic in the Southern Hemisphere, in parts of the world that don't have resources to deal with this kind of a global issue,” Scott Gottlieb, Trump’s former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Gottlieb added, however, that Trump “raised a lot of valid concerns” about Chinese transparency around the Covid-19 outbreak.

“China was not truthful with the world at the outset of this,” Gottlieb said Sunday. “Had they been more truthful with the world, which would have enabled them to be more truthful with themselves, they might have actually been able to contain this entirely.”

Tom Inglesby, director of Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security, in a separate interview Sunday also called for the U.S. to maintain its support for the WHO.

“The U.S. needs the World Health Organization to function properly,” Inglesby said on “Fox News Sunday.” “It is the organization that helps the world prepare and respond to this. We’re going to need the world to recover from Covid if we’re going to get normalcy back.”


WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Trump last week exchanged public comments after the president first threatened, via tweet, to remove U.S. backing from the organization.

“The W.H.O. really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look,” Trump tweeted Tuesday morning. “Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on,” he added. “Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?”

In response, Tedros called for “unity” and “solidarity” amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“With unity, with solidarity, at a national level and global level, resources will not be a problem,” Tedros said last week, before thanking the United States for its long history of support for global health.


David Nabarro, a WHO special envoy, appeared Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to plead his organization’s case.

“Every single human being in the world is affected by [the coronavirus]. Businesses are really in trouble. Communities are in distress. I really do hope that all nations will not find any reason to make threats or other such things that will undermine our capacity to bring together all the best knowledge that we can find,” Nabarro said.