MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd March, 2020) The World Health Organization warned on Monday about the dangers of stigmatizing entire ethnicities over the COVID-19 disease outbreak.
"It helps nobody to do that, and, particularly, when it comes to ethnic profiling of people. It's not only unhelpful, but it's apparent, and we reject it entirely," WHO emergencies chief Michael Ryan said.
The global health authority has been pushing countries that are taking aggressive action to contain the disease not to start apportioning blame over the outbreak after reports of racist attacks on Asians.
"Stigma, to be honest, is more dangerous than the virus itself," WHO boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the press conference.
He said it pained him to see the level of stigma associated with the virus. WHO has repeatedly warned that discrimination against patients may prevent others from coming forward.
"We are not angels. We make mistakes, but at the same time, we can make rational decisions to and we can have the right attitude and behavior, and that's what we're calling for," he added.
Ryan also criticized governments for underfunding public health, while spending "thousands, millions times more" on other types of security challenges.
"We may be paying heavy price for our ignoring preparedness as one of the central measures of human security on this planet. I hope we don't pay too heavy a price for that, but we will certainly learn the lessons," he said.
The new strain of coronavirus emerged in China, which leads the infection tally by a wide margin. Growing xenophobia in the United States prompted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to publish a warning that viruses do not target people based on their ethnic background.
