President Trump orders the US to leave the World Health Organization

On By Littum

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NEW YORK – President Donald Trump is pulling the United States out of the World Health Organization for the second time, the White House announced late Monday.

The day one announcement fulfilling Trump’s campaign promise to reject global institutions. Health experts worry that it isolates the United States, with implications for pandemic and disease response and diplomatic relations worldwide.

The United States is and has historically been the largest funder of the global health agency headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The WHO, part of the United Nations, is tasked with preparing for and combating health emergencies. The United States has had a major influence on the agency since its founding after World War II.

Trump criticized the WHO for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, even as his administration came under scrutiny for being slow to respond to the crisis. In 2020, when the pandemic was at its peak, he began the process of withdrawing from the WHO.

Despite his promise, he failed to do so under US law governing the withdrawal timeline and funding commitments to the agency. Former President Joe Biden reversed Trump’s decision after taking office and restored funding to the WHO.

Trump’s executive order — on the first day of his second term rather than the final year of his first presidency — effectively allows him to carry out his decision.

The order said the United States withdrew “due to the organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic arising from Wuhan, China and other global health crises, its failure to enact urgently needed reforms, and its failure to demonstrate independence from the undue political influence of WHO member states.” It also cited the “unfairly onerous payments” the US has made to support the organization.

Under the Biden administration, the United States continued its role as the largest funder of the agency, which has a budget of $6.8 billion in the current fiscal year. Almost a fifth of the WHO’s budget in 2023 came from the United States

The US has been part of the WHO since 1948, the same year the organization launched, and leaving would make the nation the only major power not a member of the 194-nation body.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said the agency will make every effort to work with the incoming Trump administration to continue strengthening global health security, Tarik Jašarević, a WHO spokesman, said in an email. The partnership between the WHO and the United States has “protected and saved millions of lives in the Americas and around the world,” Jašarević said, referring to the director general.

“Serious strategic mistake,” health experts say

Trump’s announcement was expected by health experts. In the public and private spheres, government officials and academics expressed concern over the decision, which they said endangers the health of the nation and the world.

In December, Dr. Ashish Jha, Biden White House’s former COVID-19 response coordinator, it a “catastrophic mistake” for the global community and a “terrible mistake” for the United States

“This will be a serious strategic mistake that will make America less healthy and less safe,” Lawrence Gostin, a global public health expert and faculty director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, told USA TODAY.

“The attraction itself is going to isolate the United States,” Gostin said. “It will isolate us diplomatically, and it will isolate us in pandemic response.”

How will the US withdraw from the WHO?

Trump’s order will require an arduous dismantling of American and global health institutions woven together for 75 years.

WHO constitution, prepared in New Yorkdoes not have a clear exit method for member states. ONE joint decision by Congress in 1948 outlined that the United States could withdraw with one year’s notice. However, this is conditional on ensuring that its financial obligations to the WHO “must be met in full for the organization’s current financial year.”

The US is the only member state that has made such an exit strategy, said Jašarević from the WHO. The former Soviet Union withdrew from the WHO in 1949 amid Cold War tensions, but returned years later.

Questions remain about how the United States and the rest of the world will interact and respond to health emergencies in the future.

A U.S. exit from the WHO would severely weaken the global health agency from responding to outbreaks, conducting surveillance and collaborating closely, Gostin said.

“Our public health agencies would be flying blind,” he said.

For example, the Pan American Health Organization, WHO’s regional office for the Americas, is based in Washington, DC. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also has staff at WHO and elsewhere globally.

America’s response, along with the WHO, has been key to fighting diseases such as polio, which has been nearly eradicated, and HIV/AIDS under a President George W. Bush-era program that has helped slow transmission in several countries. The Bush program is considered a success both in public health and in diplomatic relations.

Even more technically, information sharing between the U.S. and WHO has been key not only to disease response but also pharmaceutical development to rapidly innovate and create life-saving vaccines and treatments, Gostin said.

Gostin now worries about other emerging diseases and pandemic threats that could leave the United States weaker and more vulnerable.

This includes mpox, which has killed at least a thousand people in Africa by 2024, and bird flu circulating in the United States. US officials assessed that bird flu has a “moderate” risk of becoming a pandemic, and just one or two mutations in the bird flu virus that has been circulating could make it more contagious or severe in humans.

Gostin cited Operation Warp Speed, the accelerated COVID-19 vaccine effort led by the United States during Trump’s first administration. Then the US provided vaccines to its entire population before offering them to vulnerable people elsewhere, which struck many around the world as unfair.

“In the next pandemic,” Gostin said, “we may find ourselves at the back of the line, on the outside looking in.”