The ”1 Dollar, 1 World” campaign is asking people around the world to give one dollar to the UN health agency that fights chronic and emerging diseases worldwide and to post a photo of themselves on social media with their index finger raised.
Tania Cernuschi, a WHO staff member of 10 years, who has worked on improving vaccine access, said she thought of the campaign when she could not sleep after Trump’s announcement.
”I felt frustrated, I felt disappointed,” Cernuschi said in an interview at WHO’s Geneva headquarters. ”I was, as everybody I think, unsettled by the announcement,” she said, saying funding cuts would cost lives.
The $1 billion she aims to raise roughly corresponds to what the United States, the agency’s biggest donor, has given on average for each two-year budget, WHO data showed.
So far, Cernuschi’s campaign has raised around $58,000, a fraction of the target, since last week’s launch.
Also read: Trump considers WHO U-turn days after ordering withdrawal from global health agency
Many early donors are senior WHO staff, including epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove who became one of the public faces of the agency during COVID, and donors based in wealthy countries like Switzerland and the United States.
That trend means the campaign might ”come off as UN civil servants fundraising to protect their own salaries and work [programmes]”, said global health consultant Tina Purnat in a blog.
Asked to respond, Cernuschi said: ”I think we’re all privileged here. But we work for people who are not privileged, and that’s why our work is important.”
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus voiced support. ”I’m proud of her. All the staff are saying we are part of the solution,” he told Reuters.
Cernuschi, a 46-year-old Italian who has worked in public health for 25 years, said it was to be expected that people from richer countries gave more. Donations are now coming in from Ukraine, India and parts of Africa, she said, and referred to a message from an Indian woman.
”She said, ’You have an army behind you’. And it was very touching. And I felt it. I said, I wrote back: I feel the army.”
Also read: Activists to file lawsuit against Trump’s transgender troops order
