Health Experts Condemn Donald Trump’s WHO Funding Freeze: ‘Crime Against Humanity’

“The president’s decision makes Americans less safe, let’s be clear about that,” one expert warned.

Leading health experts denounced President Donald Trump’s decision to halt U.S. funding for the World Health Organization amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump announced the move on Tuesday, accusing the WHO of failing “in its basic duty” to initially warn the world of the burgeoning public health crisis that is believed to have originated in China. Trump failed to acknowledge his own refusal to take action on pandemic warnings.

Lawrence Gostin, a global health law expert from Georgetown University, told MSNBC’s Ari Melber that “there’ll be many more deaths” without a WHO that’s empowered.

Gostin also predicted a further loss of U.S. global influence as a consequence of Trump’s move.

Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of the Lancet medical journal, described Trump’s decision as “a crime against humanity,” tweeting “every scientist, every health worker, every citizen must resist and rebel against this appalling betrayal of global solidarity.”

“The president’s decision makes Americans less safe, let’s be clear about that,” Thomas Bollyky, the director of the Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, explained to CNN’s Don Lemon.