UN Foundation President & CEO discusses UN and WHO's role in Coronavirus Fight

Ambassador Elizabeth Cousen talks with Yahoo Finance's editor-in-chief Andy Serwer about the UN Foundations response to the COVID-19 pandemic and how they are working in conjunction with the World Health Organization to help countries battle the virus.

Video Transcript

ANDY SERWER: I'm here with Ambassador Elizabeth Cousens, who is the president and CEO of the United Nations Foundation. Ambassador, nice to see you.

ELIZABETH COUSENS: Good to see you, Andy.

ANDY SERWER: I want to start off by asking you about what the United Nations Foundation is doing, I guess primarily in conjunction with the World Health Organization, about the coronavirus pandemic.

ELIZABETH COUSENS: Thanks so much, Andy. Well, as soon as this crisis began to really intensify, we wanted to find a way to allow people around the world to contribute to the World Health Organization's lifesaving frontline efforts to combat this pandemic. So we worked with WHO. We worked also with a European partner, the Swiss Philanthropy Foundation, to create something called the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund.

This is a unique fund. There's never been anything like it before. It basically allows anyone anywhere to contribute directly to the World Health Organization, whether they're an individual, a company, a philanthropy large or small. We created it two weeks ago, and at the two week mark last Friday, we hit $100 million in response. We have seen an overwhelming outpouring of generosity and solidarity from around the world, and it's been extraordinary.

ANDY SERWER: Amazing. And where does that money go to? What does WHO use the money for?

ELIZABETH COUSENS: So these funds go efficiently to WHO for their most urgent frontline needs. So that's everything from the 2 million pieces of personal protective equipment they've already supplied to 68 countries around the world. They've provided lab diagnostic kits to 120 countries around the world. They're providing training courses in six languages that a million health care workers have used around the world. So it's really that frontline urgent needs to fill critical gaps.

ANDY SERWER: Last week, the G20 held a virtual summit by their leaders in an effort to try to combat the pandemic. How can they improve the coordination-- their coordination in this fight?

ELIZABETH COUSENS: Well, the first is that it's critical to allow the World Health Organization to do its mandated role. WHO has the singular mandate to coordinate the global public health response for everyone. That's their job. It's like global triage. It's keeping everybody in line using the right kinds of protocols and standards and understanding what the most urgent medical needs are. That's the job they've been playing since this crisis began. And I think you see an outpouring of support for them because they've been performing it very well.

ANDY SERWER: The WHO, I believe, along with the pope, have called for a global ceasefire. Is that something that you see playing out potentially?

ELIZABETH COUSENS: The secretary general, António Guterres, called for a global ceasefire. You know, there's a long history of what they call humanitarian pauses in the midst of really extraordinary circumstances, and there could be no more extraordinary circumstance than this. I mean, we're all tired of using the word "unprecedented," but it truly is unprecedented in anyone's lifetimes, let alone many before that. So this is the time for those extraordinary actions.

ANDY SERWER: What is the United Nations, per se, doing about the coronavirus?

ELIZABETH COUSENS: Well, the World Health Organization is part of the UN system. They're leading the global public health response, and the secretary general and other critical parts of the UN system are doing their jobs in these extraordinary circumstances. You know, you look at an agency like UNICEF, which is responsible for work in some of the most hard-hit places and the most vulnerable populations. The Secretary General at the leadership level sending the message of solidarity, global cooperation, and the urgency of coordinated response. Everybody's stepping up to do their part.

ANDY SERWER: Kelly Craft, the current ambassador to the United Nations from the US, says the Trump administration has, quote, "set an example for the world on how to mitigate not only this pandemic but future ones." Do you agree with that? And what can the US do better, maybe?

ELIZABETH COUSENS: I think everyone is being tested in the face of something they've never dealt with before. We are learning lessons right, left, and center about what different countries are doing, about what different localities within countries are doing differently. And we're all trying to learn the best way to handle a situation like this. I think there is no question but that we need stepped up, coordinated, comprehensive effort to be able to get over the worst parts of the curve of this virus in every place around the world.

We're dealing with our own place on the curve in the United States. There are some countries where it hasn't hit yet. You know, a few weeks ago, there were only five countries in Africa that had coronavirus. There are now 39. We are going to see waves of this virus in different parts of the world, and we are all going to have to work together at scale to get ahead of it.

ANDY SERWER: How does your organization and WHO prioritize things, though, may I ask? Because on the one hand, you have the United States, which has a lot of cases but also has a lot of money. On the other hand, you might have cases-- countries in Africa where the disease is incipient but there is no money. And so-- and then it's just changing every hour. How do you even track this?

ELIZABETH COUSENS: Well, that is part of WHO's job. They do track it comprehensively. They actually have a country tracker. It's transparent and accessible on their web site, even. A lot of data, a lot of algorithms go into that. They update it daily. And that allows them to have an overall sense of, for want of a better term, global triage. They obviously put a particular emphasis on countries who have the fewest resources and the greatest burden, so countries with the weaker health systems. That's an area of particular concern, but they are concerned about the global response. Because at the end of the day, we're not beating this anywhere if we don't beat it everywhere.

ANDY SERWER: Are there countries or maybe municipalities, even, where you think have been-- that have been particularly effective? Are there any that are taking the lead?

ELIZABETH COUSENS: Well, I think we're all looking at this as citizens, as public health professionals, or as policy professionals every day. We're all watching the trackers, the curves that we see out there. So you know, recent reporting from Seattle that some of the aggressive measures that have been taken in Seattle have really started to help show signs of progress, and everywhere, data lags a little bit. So we're all trying to learn this in real time and learn from one another. I think what's most important is that we're open-minded about doing that, so that we can take rapid action, well-resourced action that can really help us get ahead of this.

ANDY SERWER: Are you concerned about misinformation online in this pandemic?

ELIZABETH COUSENS: Sure. I think everyone's concerned about it. Dr. Tedros at WHO was called-- he said we have a problem with a pandemic, and we also have a problem with an infodemic, where a combination of false information, sometimes even well-intentioned but badly pervade information, can lead people astray and allow us to take our mind off of what is the most effective and necessary form of response. So it's crucial that we get the narrative straight, we get the facts straight, and we get them out to everybody in a transparent and accessible fashion.

ANDY SERWER: And finally, Ambassador Cousens, we lately witnessed a wave of anti-globalism around the world over, say, the past half-decade. Does this drive us further apart, or is it possible this could even bring us back together?

ELIZABETH COUSENS: Well, I think first we are seeing at the individual level an extraordinary outpouring of solidarity around the world. You see it in the 200,000 people who contributed to our fund, in the dozens of companies from around the world that have contributed to it. So one, we're seeing that, and it's an extraordinary and inspiring thing to see.

But two, there could be no clearer demonstration of the need for global cooperation than an emergency of this kind. We are utterly dependent on one another's choices in a situation like this. That is the whole base case for global cooperation, and we're seeing it live. We're seeing it in extremely painful ways today, but we should emerge from this stronger and with a renewed commitment to cooperate on some of these truly collective threats that we face.

ANDY SERWER: Ambassador Elizabeth Cousens, president and CEO of the United Nations foundation, thanks so much for joining us.

ELIZABETH COUSENS: Thanks very much, Andy. Pleasure.