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An online petition is calling for Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, to resign and is now estimated to have nearly one million signatures.

People around the world are now clamoring to the actions of the World Health Organization, most notably its Director-General. Tedros is being accused of allowing China to underreport the impact of the virus.

Tedros is an Ethiopian politician who has led the United Nations-backed health body as the Director-General since 2017. However, he is now under fire due to his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic that continues to infect more than 1.8 million people and has reportedly killed more than 144,000 people around the globe.

PETITION CALLING FOR THE RESIGNATION OF GHEBREYESUS

Online website Change.org is spearheading the call for the resignation of the WHO's Director-General.

At this time, the petition has reached more than 910,000 and is set to reach one million in a few hours after this writing. According to the website, they firmly believe that Ghebreyesus is not fit to be the head of WHO, and many are very disappointed by his actions.

This apparent lack of action is the reason that they are calling for his immediate resignation. The website also stated that "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."

A DEMAND FOR GHEBREYESUS TO DISCLOSE HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH CHINESE GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS 

Aside from the website calling on Ghebreyesus to resign, United States lawmakers have also been one of his harshest critics. A group of Republican lawmakers from the House Oversight Committee wrote to Ghebreyesus, demanding full disclosure of the nature of his relationship with the Chinese government.

In the letter, Republican lawmakers wrote that they have observed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, that the WHO has avoided blaming the Chinese government.

They also added: "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 Republican group also stated that on a Twitter post from the WHO in January, it was written that Chinese authorities had found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmissions of the virus, which added to the speculations that Ghebreyesus could be protecting China.  

This assumption might be one of the factors as to why the number of COVID-19 cases around the globe started to rise since the late days of January. As for Peter Navarro, the White House Economic Adviser, he described Ghebreyesus as "one of the Chinese government's proxies."

PRESIDENT TRUMP PLANNING TO CUT FUNDING

Navarro also said that President Donald Trump is now seriously planning to cut the country's funding of WHO following the accusation against Ghebreyesus and on how the organization handled information regarding the COVID-19 situation. 

Navarro explained: "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. So it's going to be up to the president to look at this."

GHEBREYESUS' RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT TRUMP

Meanwhile, Ghebreyesus criticized Trump and accused the U.S. President of politicizing the pandemic after Trump said that he might cut government funding for the organization. 

During a press conference, Ghebreyesus said: "If you don't want many more body bags, you refrain from politicizing it - please quarantine politicizing COVID."

As you may recall, Ghebreyesus just last month commended Trump on how he is leading the country and his response to the pandemic.

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