President Trump moved quickly to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization on Monday, a move that public health experts say will undermine the nation’s position as a global health leader and make it harder to fight the next pandemic.
In an executive order issued about eight hours after he was sworn in, Trump cited a number of reasons for the withdrawal, including the WHO’s “mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic” and “failure to urgently adopt reforms necessary.” .” He said the agency demands “unfairly burdensome payments” from the United States and complained that China pays less.
The move was not unexpected. Trump has been railing against the WHO since 2020, when he attacked the agency for its approach to the coronavirus pandemic and threatened to withhold U.S. funding. In July 2020, Trump took formal steps to withdraw from the agency.
But after losing the 2020 election, the threat failed to materialize. On his first day in office, January 20, 2021, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. blocked it from taking effect.
Leaving the WHO would mean, among other things, that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would not have access to global data provided by the agency. When China characterized the genetic sequence of the new coronavirus in 2020, it released the information to the WHO, which shared it with other nations.
More recently, the WHO has become a target of conservatives for its work on a “pandemic treaty” to strengthen pandemic preparedness and establish legally binding policies for member countries on pathogen surveillance, rapid sharing of epidemic and on the development of local production and supply. chains of vaccines and treatments, among others.
Negotiations on the treaty broke down last year. In the United States, some Republican lawmakers saw the deal as a threat to American sovereignty.
Lawrence O. Gostin, a public health law expert at Georgetown University who helped negotiate the treaty, said a U.S. withdrawal from the WHO would be “a serious wound” to public health, but a “wound even deeper for American national interests and national security.” .”
Founded in 1948 with help from the United States, the World Health Organization is an agency of the United Nations. Its mission, according to its website, is to “address the greatest health challenges of our time and measurably advance the well-being of people around the world.”
This includes bringing aid to war-torn areas like Gaza and monitoring emerging epidemics like Zika, Ebola and Covid-19. The WHO’s two-year budget is approximately $6.8 billion; the United States generally contributed a huge share.
According to Gostin, it will take some time for the United States to withdraw. A joint resolution adopted by Congress at the agency’s founding addressed a 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.