Trump’s order cuts ties with the World Health Organization

On his first day back in the White House, President Trump signed an executive order that begins the process of withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization. Ending US membership would cut funding to the multilateral organization 22%which seriously calls into question WHO’s ability to fulfill its global public health mission.

Throughout the WHO’s 76-year history, the United States has been the organization’s most important sponsor. In 2023, the United States contributed $1.2 billion to the WHO, more than double that of any other member country. As the preeminent international public health body with 194 Member States, WHO plays a critical role in global health security, disease outbreaks and surveillance, and in mobilizing collaboration between numerous public and private organizations.

Currently, no other organization has the ability to coordinate international rapid response efforts, share medical research and innovation, and disseminate critical information. To illustrate, this includes, among other activities, the organization’s instrumental work on multiple Ebola crises in Africa, global measles outbreaks, and the sequencing of seasonal flu strains used to develop annual flu shots. WHO is also indispensable in efforts to eradicate HIV, malaria, tuberculosis and dozens of neglected tropical diseases such as leishmaniasis, dengue and river blindness. NCDs are a diverse group of parasitic and bacterial diseases that cause significant morbidity and mortality in over one billion people worldwide, disproportionately affecting poor and marginalized populations.

Since its inception, WHO has spearheaded numerous programs that have saved tens of millions of lives. One of the first major projects in which WHO was involved was the global immunization campaign that eventually led to the eradication of smallpox in 1980. And since 1977, the WHO List of Essential Medicines, revised and updated every two years, has been vital. guidance for many countries in their drug procurement policies. Essential medicines must be available in all health care systems at all times, in sufficient quantities and in appropriate dosage forms.

WHO road map for NTDs, drawn up in London in 2012, includes targets for public-private partnership commitments on logistics for the distribution of existing treatments, drug donation programs and funding for research and development of new pharmaceutical developments. Although there has been a significant disruption as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, significant progress has been made since 2012 in the implementation of large-scale disease prevention and treatment for patients suffering from BNT.

If the US does pull out of the WHO, severe funding cuts would pose an enormous challenge for the multilateral organization, potentially curtailing public health work around the world.

WHO was founded in 1948 and is based in Geneva, Switzerland. It is a subsidiary body of the UN. As a specialized agency of the UN, WHO is responsible for international health protection. Here, its role is to coordinate with all 194 member states on a wide range of public health activities, such as vaccination campaigns, water sanitation projects and support to countries dealing with public health emergencies.

The United States became a member of the WHO through a joint resolution in 1948 passed by both houses of Congress. According to Lawrence Gostin, an expert in public health law, unilateral action on the UN notification of the withdrawal of the US violates US law because it does not have direct authorization from Congress to withdraw from the WHO. Besides, under US law the country must give one year’s notice to WHO and fulfill its financial obligations to the organization for the current year.

Trump first signaled the exit of the WHO in 2020

During his first term in office, Trump said he would exclude funding to the World Health Organization pending a “review” of the organization’s “role in the gross mismanagement and cover-up of the spread of the coronavirus.”

In the early stages of the public health crisis surrounding the novel coronavirus, the WHO was apparently misled by the Chinese authorities. It seems that from the end of December to the middle of January, the Chinese authorities hiddenand in some cases cancelled reports a mysterious illness similar to pneumonia.

On December 31, 2019, the Chinese government informed the WHO China office about dozens of cases of “mystery pneumonia” in Wuhan. But the government did not say that the virus had already been sequenced in Chinese laboratoriesand turned out to be very similar to severe acute respiratory syndrome. The Hubei Provincial Health Commission subsequently ordered the labs to stop testing and destroy existing samples. Given that SARS is transmitted from person to person, although it has been shown to be less contagious than the new coronavirus, withholding such important information for several weeks would have serious consequences.

It appears that the Chinese authorities misled the WHO at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. January 18, 2020 in WHO wrote on Twitter: “A preliminary investigation by Chinese authorities found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) detected in Wuhan.”

However, in late January, the WHO began issuing repeated warnings to countries around the world about the new coronavirus and its human-to-human transmission. On January 30, 2020, WHO announced a emergency situation of international importance in the field of health care. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed particular concern about “the potential for the virus to spread in countries with weaker health systems that are ill-prepared to deal with it.” WHO also offered to provide diagnostic tests, which the US refused, but many other countries accepted.

Under the Biden administration, the US returned to its normal position on the WHO and continued to be its largest sponsor. But Republicans in Congress remained opposed, saying the WHO is not making necessary reforms, citing the organization’s alleged failure to demonstrate independence from political influence from certain WHO member states and denying to the US signing the world’s first pandemic treaty, a proposed legally binding agreement aimed at preventing, preparing for and responding to future global pandemics.

The US has traditionally been the most generous provider of medical and humanitarian aid to people in need around the world, evidenced in part by its key role as a benefactor of the WHO. As Trump’s second term begins, that largesse could be at stake. In turn, this can pose a threat to the health of the population around the world.