The United States President, Donald Trump has issued a mandate to terminate the government’s membership in the World Health Organization (WHO) for allegedly mishandling the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and other international health crises.
Aside from that, Trump also suspended U.S. contributions to the agency, costing it nearly $200 million in 2020-2021 versus the previous two-year budgets, as it battled the world’s worst health emergency in a century.
He said the WHO had failed to act independently from the “inappropriate political influence of WHO member states” and required “unfairly onerous payments” from the U.S. that were disproportionate to the sums provided by other, larger countries, such as China.
The president’s directive came barely 24 hours after he promised to sign 100 executive orders on his first day in the White House and to repeal every “radical and foolish” mandate issued by the former U.S. leader Joe Biden’s administration.
“World Health ripped us off, everybody rips off the United States. It’s not going to happen anymore,” Trump said at the signing of an executive order on the withdrawal, shortly after his inauguration to a second term on Tuesday.
According to the order, signed on Tuesday, Trump’s administration would cease negotiations on the WHO pandemic treaty while the withdrawal is in progress. U.S. government personnel working with the WHO will be recalled and reassigned, and the government will look for partners to take over necessary WHO activities.
The government will also review, rescind, and replace the 2024 U.S. Global Health Security Strategy as soon as practicable.
Reacting to Trump’s decision during a press briefing, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Guo Jiakun, said hat the role of the WHO in global health governance should only be strengthened, not weakened.
“China will continue to support the WHO in fulfilling its responsibilities, and deepen international public health cooperation,” Jiakun added.
The membership termination of the United State, WHO biggest financial backer, contributing around 18% of its overall funding. also implies that the country will leave the United Nations health agency in 12 months’ time and stop all financial contributions to its work.
The U.S. departure will likely put at risk programs across the organization, according to several experts both inside and outside the WHO, notably those tackling tuberculosis, the world’s biggest infectious disease killer, as well as HIV/AIDS and other health emergencies.
The next-largest donors to the WHO are the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, although most of that funding goes to polio eradication, and the global vaccine group Gavi, followed by the European Commission and the World Bank. The next-largest national donor is Germany, which contributes around 3% of the WHO’s funding.
Trump’s withdrawal from the WHO is not unexpected. He took steps to quit the body in 2020, during his first term as president, accusing the WHO of aiding China’s efforts to “mislead the world” about the origins of COVID.
WHO vigorously denies the allegation and says it continues to press Beijing to share data to determine whether COVID emerged from human contact with infected animals or due to research into similar viruses in a domestic laboratory.
Under U.S. law, leaving the WHO requires a one-year notice period, and the payment of any outstanding fees. Before the U.S. withdrawal could be completed last time, Joe Biden won the country’s presidential election and put a stop to it on his first day in office on Jan. 20, 2021.
