The WHO seems to compensate partly for the absence of universal healthcare in the poorest countries, by direct investment.
I suspect that it is also directed towards communication and information. Like teaching the developping world the known techniques to mitigate malaria, the primary hygienic gestures's importance (like using soap to wash hands), etc. And of course the importance to have protected sex to fend off AIDS, etc. (which is an upstream battle given the religious and traditions resistance to many of these advises)
Like when the Republicans wasted billions of dollars promoting abstinence as the solution to AIDS:
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/05/03/4766011...
The AIDS projects from WHO would never dare consider abstinence. They already have the hardest job countering all the traditions and superstitions, even for the simplest thing as not to kiss the dead relatives, so how could they succeed in asking people not to have sex?
An example, WHO really said:
"Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission"
which is realistic and prudent. But in this thread an in every other place on internet, it is interpreted by US people as:
"there is no human-to-human transmission"
which is downright crazy.
Also, I see a lot of mixing with Taiwan issues, even though the particular data about the pandemics in this country (and yes I am in favor of Taiwan independence, but that does not matter, and that's my point) did not change at all the scientific and public health conclusions and advises to be taken. In other words, to do their public health job, the WHO had absolutely no need to quote Taiwan in particular. Of course they also considered not angering China and so refrained to speak of Taiwan because of that too, but it would be the same for any of the UNO Security Council countries' delicate issues, including US.
If WHO was to be rebuilt upon better bases, everybody would benefit from it. But cutting its funds?? It's stupid.
PS: another point, UNO scientific organs really are just the sum of their individual countries' parts. It should not, it should be larger and better than its parts, but that's just not the case. Their is no "WHO laboratory" etc, there are just specialists from participating countries that share their own labs data (or not). To change that, it would need more funding (not less!) to own its own labs, facilities, research programs, etc.