Trump withdraws the US from the World Health Organization

On Monday, President Trump moved quickly to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization, a move public health experts say will undermine the country’s position as a global health leader and make it more complex to fight another pandemic.

In executive order issued about eight hours after taking the oath of office, Trump cited a number of reasons for withdrawing, including the WHO’s position “mishandling the Covid-19 pandemic” and “failure to adopt urgently needed reforms.” He said the agency was demanding “unfairly onerous payments” from the United States and complained that China was paying less.

This move was not unexpected. Trump has criticized the WHO since 2020, when he attacked the agency over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic and threatened to withhold U.S. funding for it. In July 2020, Trump took formal steps to withdraw from the agency.

However, after losing the 2020 elections, the threat did not materialize. On his first day in office, January 20, 2021, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. blocked its entry into force.

Leaving the WHO would mean, among other things: loss of access to global data shared by this agency with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When China characterized the genetic sequence of the modern coronavirus in 2020, it passed the information to the WHO, which shared it with other countries.

Recently, the WHO has become a target of conservatives for its work on “pandemic treaty” strengthen pandemic preparedness and establish legally binding policies for member countries on, among other things, pathogen surveillance, rapid sharing of data on disease outbreaks, and building local production and supply chains of vaccines and therapies.

Treaty talks broke down last year. In the United States, some Republican lawmakers viewed the agreement as a threat to American sovereignty.

Lawrence O. Gostin, an expert in public health law at Georgetown University who helped negotiate the treaty, said a U.S. withdrawal from the WHO would be a “grave wound” to public health but “an even deeper wound to American national interests and national security ” .”

Founded in 1948 with the assist of the United States, the World Health Organization is an agency of the United Nations. According to its website, its mission is to “tackle the greatest health challenges of our time and measurably improve the well-being of people around the world.”

This includes providing aid to war-torn areas such as Gaza and tracking emerging epidemics such as Zika, Ebola and Covid-19. WHO’s annual budget is approximately $6.8 billion; The United States has typically contributed enormously.

According to Gostin, the US withdrawal will take some time. The joint resolution adopted by Congress at the time of the agency’s founding addressed the potential withdrawal and required the United States to give one year’s notice and pay its financial obligations to the organization for the current fiscal year.