The United States has long been a leader in global health, and it is essential to the safety of Americans that we remain that way — which is why some of President Trump’s isolationist impulses are worrying.
On Monday, hours after taking office, Mr. Trump signed a decree announcing that the United States would decide to withdraw from the World Health Organization (which he attempted to do) during his first termbefore Joe Biden reversed the decision as president). His plans to impose massive tariffs on goods imported into the country could have devastating effects on the manufacturing of medicines within our borders, given that many of the necessary ingredients come from abroad , with about 60% from India and China, according to one analysis.
The health of Americans is at stake. Border walls and protectionist policies cannot prevent infectious diseases from entering the country. Only with vigilant international infection surveillance, containment of outbreaks, and eventual eradication of infectious diseases worldwide can Americans ever be protected and safe. We must prioritize sharing vaccines with other countries, training medical providers to provide care abroad, collaborating on clinical trials and research studies with other institutions, and sharing constant source of factual information on epidemics and health trends around the world. And the United States must continue to lead the way.
Many view America’s work on global health as smart diplomacy. Even the most hostile countries value our medical expertise and support, because health security is essential to international security and each country’s economy. The first Trump administration moderated its active engagement in global health security initiatives soon after taking office. This has left us far less able to mount a rapid and robust response to the global Covid-19 outbreak, which has devastated the global economy and exacerbated conflicts around the world.
Since the end of World War II, the United States has been the leading global leader in global health through the Department of Health and Human Services’ global health programs, USAID, and dozens of foundations and nonprofit groups, such as the Gates Foundation. . Many of its efforts have always been organized under the umbrella of the WHO, whose members work together throughout the year to prevent pandemics, promote life-saving immunization programs and tackle problems such as maternal mortality and Alzheimer’s disease which affect all countries.
American leadership has always played a vital role in these efforts. Last year, the country led the team that successfully negotiated new amendments to the International Health Regulations of 2005, which govern the rights, obligations and reporting requirements for 196 countries. These amendments are intended in part to strengthen WHO’s ability to declare and respond to a pandemic. U.S. leaders also helped lead meetings between country leaders on pandemic response, tuberculosis And antimicrobial resistance at some of the recent meetings of the United Nations General Assembly.
While the WHO desperately needs an updated organizational and operational structure, withdrawing from this global body, as Mr. Trump has announced, would be disastrous. Its role is unrivaled in providing rapid responses and more targeted deployment of resources when public health crises arise.
For several decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has helped train and position epidemiologists in various regions of the world to respond to new outbreaks and rapidly identify and treat emerging pathogens well before they reach U.S. borders . We saw the fruits of these efforts manifest during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Lagos, Nigeria. Patient contacts were identified, isolated and visited by staff trained by the CDC and its partners – efforts that helped prevent the Ebola virus from ravaging the rest of Nigeria and affecting other countries in Africa and from all over the world.
HHS also led the government’s efforts to eradicate polio in collaboration with the Gates Foundation and CDC workers overseas. Training local health workers, funding immunization initiatives, and encouraging immunization efforts enabled India and Africa to be certified polio-free, eradicating the disease in most countries. regions of the world.
Some suggest that withdrawing from international collaboration on global health will not harm the United States and that it is possible to simply close our borders and restrict travel when outbreaks are identified. But we live in an interdependent world: in addition to the majority of the ingredients in our medicines, about 15 percent of the country’s food supply is imported. About eight million Americans leave the country each month for work, tourism or family reasons, and about 66 million international visitors travel across the country each year. By the time a travel ban was even put in place for Covid-19 by the first Trump administration, the disease was already present in American communities. It is foolish to believe that the country can protect itself from any potential infectious disease outbreak without more proactive solutions.
In fact, the country is already facing a looming crisis in the form of bird flu. The disease has ravaged poultry flocks, spread rapidly among cattle and even managed to infect a handful of humans. Hospitalized cases (including the first recorded death) only exacerbated fears.
There is still time for Mr. Trump to come to his senses and reverse course. It is in the interests of our national security – and essential to the health and well-being of the country – that we continue to play a leadership role in global health.
Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat elected to two terms as governor of Kansas, served as Secretary of Health and Human Services from 2009 to 2014.
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