China and WHO spit in the face of the world. And world smiled back and greeted them.
The WHO is also a vital resource for developing nations which lack the technical infrastructure and know-how to do their own research or develop their own policies, and depend on support from the WHO to advise and provide resources to deal with medical crises. It's out there saving lives across the developing world every day.
Both of these things are true, but the reason the WHO is a political football is because the nation states it depends on for funding and resources keep kicking it about for their own political purposes. The WHO is the organisation our countries have built, organised the way we structured it, vulnerable to nation state interference so that our nations can interfere with them when we want to.
The only way to get the job the WHO are tasked with done properly is to stop kicking them about and actually support them in their efforts. Insist they be freed from nation state interference, stop blaming them for being kicked about, and go after the nation states interfering with and undermining them. That also means reforming the WHO itself and better resourcing it. We need to stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution.