President Trump moved quickly Monday to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization, a move that public health experts say will damage the country’s position as a global health leader and make more difficult to fight the next pandemic.
In a decree released about eight hours after being sworn in, Mr. Trump cited a series of reasons for his withdrawal, including the WHO’s “mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic” and “failure to enact urgent reforms.” . He said the agency was demanding “unfairly onerous payments” from the United States and complained that China was paying less.
This decision was not unexpected. Mr. Trump has attacked the WHO since 2020, when he attacked the agency over its approach to the coronavirus pandemic and threatened to withdraw funding from the United States. In July 2020, Mr. Trump took formal steps to withdraw from the agency.
But after his defeat in the 2020 elections, the threat did not 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 the global data provided by the agency. When China characterized the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus in 2020, it disclosed the information to the WHO, which shared it with other countries.
More recently, the WHO has become a target of conservatives because of its work on a “treaty on the pandemic” strengthening pandemic preparedness and establishing legally binding policies for member countries on pathogen surveillance, rapid sharing of outbreak data, and strengthening local manufacturing and supply chains for vaccines and treatments, among others.
Treaty talks broken 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 injury” to health public but an “even deeper wound to American national interests and national security”. .”
Founded in 1948 with assistance from the United States, the World Health Organization is a United Nations agency. Its mission, according to its website, is “to confront the greatest health challenges of our time and to measurably advance the well-being of the world’s population.”
This involves providing aid to war-torn areas like Gaza and tracking emerging epidemics like Zika, Ebola and Covid-19. The WHO biennial budget is approximately $6.8 billion; the United States has generally contributed a disproportionate share.
According to Mr. Gostin, it will take some time before the United States withdraws. A joint resolution passed by Congress when the agency was created addressed possible withdrawal and required the United States to give one year’s notice and meet its financial obligations to the organization for its withdrawal. current exercise.