Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
The United States will leave the world health organizationchairman Donald Trump said on Monday, saying the global health agency had mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic and other international health crises.
Trump said the WHO had failed to act independently of the “inappropriate political influence of WHO member states” and demanded “unfairly heavy payments” from the US that were disproportionate to the sums provided by other, larger countries , like China.
“World health ripped us off, everybody rips off the United States. It won’t happen again,” Trump said at the signing of an executive order on the withdrawal, shortly after his inauguration to a second term.
The WHO said on Tuesday it regretted the move from its top donor country.
“We hope that the United States will reconsider, and we really hope that there will be constructive dialogue for the benefit of everyone, for Americans, but also for people around the world,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told reporters in Geneva.
The move sets a 12-month notice period for the US to leave the United Nations health agency and stop all financial contributions to its work. The United States is by far the largest financial supporter of the WHO, contributing about 18 percent of its total funding. WHO’s most recent two-year budget, for 2024-2025, was US$6.8 billion.
The departure of the United States is likely to jeopardize programs in the organization, according to several experts both inside and outside the WHO, in particular those that tackle tuberculosis, the world’s biggest killer of infectious diseases, such as HIV / AIDS and other health emergencies.
Get breaking national news
For news that affects Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you as they happen.
“This is the darkest day for global health that I have ever experienced,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health at Georgetown University in Washington and director of the WHO Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. “Trump could sow the seeds for the next pandemic.”
Trump’s order said the administration would suspend negotiations on the WHO pandemic treaty while the withdrawal is underway. US government personnel working with the WHO will be recalled and reassigned, and the government will seek partners to take over necessary WHO activities, according to the order.
The government will review, withdraw and replace the 2024 US Global Health Security Strategy as soon as possible, the order said.
The next largest donor to the WHO is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, although most of that funding goes to polio eradication. The chief executive Mark Suzman said on X that the foundation would continue to strengthen the WHO not to weaken. The next largest state donor in terms of combined mandatory fees and voluntary contributions is Germany, which accounts for about three percent of the WHO’s funding.
Germany’s health minister said Tuesday that Berlin hoped to talk Trump out of the move while the European Union expressed its concerns.
When asked about Trump’s decision, the Chinese Foreign Ministry told a regular press briefing on Tuesday that the WHO’s role in global health governance should only be strengthened, not weakened.
“China will continue to support the WHO in fulfilling its responsibilities, and deepen international public health cooperation,” said Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for the ministry.
Trump’s withdrawal from the WHO is not unexpected. He took steps to leave the body in 2020, during his first term as president, accusing the WHO of aiding China’s efforts to “mislead the world” about the origins of COVID.
WHO strongly denies the allegation and says it continues to press Beijing to share data to determine whether COVID originated from human contact with infected animals or through research into similar viruses in a local laboratory.
Under US law, leaving the WHO requires a one-year notice period, and the payment of all outstanding fees. Before the US withdrawal could be completed for the last time, Joe Biden won the presidential election and ended it on his first day in office on January 20, 2021.
-Reporting by Patrick Wingrove, Jennifer Rigby and Emma Farge; Additional reporting by Eduardo Baptista and Lewis Jackson in Beijing; Editing by Shri Navaratnam, Saad Sayeed, Kate Mayberry and Tomasz Janowski
