President Trump issued an executive order Monday night withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization.
The U.S. has historically been the largest funder of the Geneva-based organization, which is a branch of the United Nations responsible for combating global public health emergencies.
Public health experts fear the move will weaken the organization as well as global health security.
Trump has previously tried to remove the U.S. from the organization, issuing a notice of withdrawal in 2020. He criticized the organization for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, calling it very “China centric” and threatened to withhold U.S. funding even while his administration was scrutinized for downplaying the virus’s threat early in the pandemic.
Former President Biden quickly rejoined the organization when he entered the White House in 2021, before the end of the one-year waiting period of withdrawal had completed. He also restored U.S. funding to the organization.
In his Monday executive order, Trump again criticizes the WHO for its “mishandling” of the COVID-19 pandemic for “unfairly” asking for “onerous” payments from the U.S.
About a fifth of the WHO’s budget in 2023 — or roughly $1.28 billion — came from the United States.
Those funds went toward identifying and responding to health emergencies and stopping disease threats from spreading across borders, according to the WHO’s website.
The U.S. withdrawal from the WHO would mean the country’s health agencies would lose access to the organization’s resources, such as global data releases.
“The US withdrawing from the WHO will severely constrain the ability of the US to have situational awareness of infectious disease emergencies occurring all over the world all the time (including now),” said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security who specializes in emerging infectious diseases and pandemic preparedness.
“The very real reforms that need to occur at the WHO such as putting pressure on China regarding information on the early days of COVID-19 and allowing Taiwan to be part of the organization are less likely to occur without the US as a member.”
