US backs WHO reforms lead by member states
"We must rise to this occasion even as we combat the pandemic and ressurect our economies"
The United States said on Tuesday that member states must lead efforts to reform the World Health Organization (WHO), including any decision to provide additional funding to the UN agency.
"It is our duty to provide the WHO and the broader international system with the tools to do its work effectively, efficiently, independently and transparently," Garrett Grigsby of the US Department of Health and Human Services who headds the US delegation, told the WHO's Executive Board in Geneva.
"We must rise to this occasion even as we combat the pandemic and ressurect our economies," he said, speaking by videoconference from Washington.
Britain's envoy, speaking on behalf of the Group of Seven wealthy nations, said that any WHO reforms need to be "ambitious and grounded in robust evidence".