WHO says won’t ‘give up’ as US aid funding cuts take toll

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  • WHO says won’t ‘give up’ as US aid funding cuts take toll

THE World Health Organization acknowledged Tuesday that the US freeze on foreign aid funding has hit vital global health programmes but vowed to find a way to keep delivering to those in need.
The United Nations health agency said it was still too early to determine the full impact of the freeze on foreign aid spending by the United States -- traditionally the world’s largest aid donor.
But WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris admitted that some programmes had clearly been affected, including the global measles surveillance network, which had been 100-per-cent funded by the United States.
On measles, “there is a big shortfall”, she told reporters in Geneva.
“We’re not going to let it collapse,” she insisted, adding though that “finding a way to keep it going is of course challenging”.
Janet Diaz, head of the Safe Scalable Care unit at WHO’s emergencies programme, said the response to an ongoing Ebola outbreak in Uganda had been hit by the US aid freeze.
“WHO has had to step up and cover areas it usually doesn’t support,” she said, pointing to “biological sample transport and logistics and the deployment of surveillance teams to points of entries”. — AFP

Source: The Global New Light of Myanmar 

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