The U.S. is currently the WHO's biggest financial supporter, covering almost 15% of its $4.8 billion budget.

There are two types of contributions that each country makes to the WHO, those are assessed contributions and voluntary supplementary assessed contributions.

Assessed contributions are payments that countries have to make for them to become a member of the organization. The amount paid depends on the country's wealth and the size of the population. The latter is a voluntary amount but the organization encourages countries to contribute so that those less well funded activities can benefit from it.

As of March 31, 2020, the U.S. is the world's top contributor followed by China in second and Japan and Germany, at the third and fourth spot respectively.

Freezing of WHO funding

It's been a month since President Trump said he's decided to halt the U.S funding for WHO. The President has stressed that the organization has failed in slowing down the coronavirus pandemic and has been negligent in the first few months of the outbreak.

A month later, the President has expressed in a tweet that restoration of funding is currently being reviewed but the country would only pay around 10% of the usual contribution matching that of China's. The WHO funding was already slashed last February in the country's most recent budget proposal. But even with the cuts executed, the U.S. still remains the highest contributor paying $115.8 million in assessed contributions. China comes in second with $57.4 million

The President believes that the World Health Organization was proving to be too "China-centric" as they have rejected travel restrictions for citizens in China back in January even after they have declared the coronavirus an international emergency. Non-WHO member, Taiwan has applied to take part in a virtual meeting of the World Health Assembly which is a WHO decision making body after they are considered to have one of the most efficient responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. This was rejected as Beijing claimed that they can only earn a seat at the WHO if they accept that their country is a province of China.

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Political criticism of WHO

This is not the first time that the World Health Organization has received flak. During the swine flu pandemic in 2009, the organization was accused of acting out too early stating that they have received too much pressure from pharmaceutical companies to declare the influenza A/H1N1 a pandemic.

Five years after, the West African Ebola outbreak shocked the world. This was considered as the worst outbreak of the Ebola virus in history and lasted from December 2013 up until June 2016 claiming over 11,000 deaths. The WHO was deemed to be negligent and was accused of acting out too late.

The WHO has been in operation for more than 70 years and the U.S. was not the first to pull out funding from the organization. Before the Soviet Union rejoined the organization in 1955, it once announced that has decided to withdraw from the WHO and refused to pay their fees for several years. Several countries have also failed to pay their assessed contributions on time.