Anchor: Instead of taking part in the latest World Health Organization's annual assembly, U.S. President Donald Trump recently sent a letter to the UN health agency, threatening to halt funding and sever its membership. In the latest news conference, the WHO chief suggested that now is not the time for Trump to pressure his organization.
Kim Bum-soo has more on how the WHO is caught in the crossfire between the U.S. and China. 

Report: 

[Sound bite: US President Donald Trump 9 (May 19)]
(Reporter: You sent a letter last night to the WHO. What reforms do they need to do?) 
"Well, it says in the letter. I don't want to go through it, the letter is very detailed, long letter. But basically they have to clean up their act. They have to do a better job. They have to be much more fair to other countries, including the United States. Or we're not going to be involved with them. And we'll do it a separate way. Ok?"

U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this week revealed on Twitter his letter to World Health Organization's(WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Trump wrote in the two-page letter that the WHO's repeated missteps in its handling of the COVID-19 outbreak have proven "very costly for the world."  The American president said U.S. funding would be cut unless the WHO promises "substantive improvements" in the next 30 days.

[Sound bite: WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus]
"There was a lot of support and vote of confidence and on the letter, we have of course received the letter and we're looking into it, thank you so much."

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, the WHO chief suggested that it's not the best time for Trump to pressure his organization.

[Sound bite: WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus] 
"We still have a long way to go in this pandemic. In the last 24 hours, there have been 106-thousand cases reported to WHO, the most in a single day since the outbreak began. Almost two-thirds of these cases were reported in just four countries."

The WHO head of emergencies, Dr. Michael Ryan, said an end to U.S. funding for the WHO will have a major impact on delivering essential health services to the most vulnerable people in the world.

[Sound bite:  Dr. Michael Ryan - Executive Director WHO Health Emergencies Program] 
"... much of the U.S. funding that reaches us here actually goes directly out in the emergency program to humanitarian health operations all over the world in all sorts of fragile and difficult settings and it's of the order of 200 million or 100 million a year, which is actually the greatest proportion of funding that we receive from WHO within the emergencies program."

The U.S.-WHO tension comes as President Trump escalates his criticism of China, with whom he accuses the UN health agency of siding. 

In a tweet Wednesday night, President Trump referred to "some wacko in China," saying that the person in question should realize that China’s incompetence led to the spread of the coronavirus and mass deaths worldwide.

China’s foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian on Tuesday blamed Trump for scapegoating the WHO and trying to shift the blame for U.S. incompetence in handling the outbreak onto others.
Kim Bum-soo, KBS World Radio News.