Wednesday on CNN’s “New Day,” former Obama administration U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power called President Donald Trump halting funding to the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) “sheer madness.”

Power said, “If I had to sum it up, I would say sheer madness. It’s obscene. It’s strictly political, really. An attempt to divert from what we all know has been the gross mismanagement of the prevention phase of this in the United States and the response phase.”

She added, “It’s tragic. The World Health Organization now is moving into a phase where it is going to try to help avert a catastrophe in the developing world. If we think about how difficult it has been for us in the United States with our sophisticated health care system to manage this crisis, imagine living in a slum in a developing country or in a refugee camp. In places like that, the only place you really have to turn for expertise and for financial support is the World Health Organization, when governments themselves can’t provide the resources. So the timing of this is particularly catastrophic because it’s about to wallop parts of the world in vulnerable communities that really can’t handle it.”

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