An online petition on Change.org is pushing for the resignation of World Health Organization director Tedros Ghebreyesus has reached close to one million signatures Monday.
Tedros has been director-general of the WHO since 2017, and has recently received criticism over the way he has handled the coronavirus pandemic so far.
Many have accused Tedros of letting China underreport the numbers of coronavirus deaths and cases in Wuhan—where the outbreak is believed to have originally occurred. Critics note that with China allegedly providing lower numbers, other countries were not given the information they needed to properly prepare and respond to the pandemic.
“We strongly think Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is not fit for his role as WHO Director General,” says the petition, which has approximately 930,000 signatures on Change.org.
“A lot of us are really disappointed,” it continues. “We believe WHO is supposed to be politically neutral. Without any investigation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus solely believes on [sic] the death and infected numbers that the Chinese government provided with them.”
Among his critics, U.S. lawmakers have been some of the most prominent. Republicans from the House Oversight Committee demanded that Tedros provide information about the relationship he has with Chinese officials, on Thursday.
“Throughout the crisis, the WHO has shied away from placing any blame on the Chinese government, which is in essence the Communist Party of China,” they wrote. “You, as leader of the WHO, even went so far as to praise the Chinese government’s ‘transparency’ during the crisis, when, in fact, the regime has consistently lied to the world by underreporting their actual infection and death statistics.”
The message from the Republicans pointed to a Twitter message in which the WHO noted that authorities in China found “no clear evidence” of the virus transmitting from human-to-human.
Peter Navarro, a White House economic advisor described Tedros as one of the “proxies” for the Chinese government
Navarro said that President Trump was talking of cutting funding for the WHO after he accused them of handling the pandemic poorly.
“It all tracks to China's view of the world and how they want to control different types of international organizations, even as they don't play by the international rules,” Navarro said. “So it's going to be up to the president to look at this.”
After Trump’s threat of cutting the organization's funding, Tedros accused him of politicizing the pandemic.
“If you don’t want many more body bags, you refrain from politicizing it–please quarantine politicizing COVID,” Tedros said during a news conference.
Tedros previously praised Trump for “taking responsibility” for his response in the pandemic.
“WHO wants to see restrictions lifted as much as anyone,” Tedros said, on Friday. “At the same time, lifting restrictions too quickly could lead to a deadly resurgence. The way down can be as dangerous as the way up if not managed properly.”
“It shows that any system could have gaps,” he later added, “and we should have the humility to see to what extent our system is prepared, where are the gaps and how we can improve it for the future.”
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