President Trump moved quickly on Monday to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization, a move that public health experts say will undermine the country’s position as a global health leader and make it more difficult to fight the next pandemic.
in Executive order Released about eight hours after he was sworn in, Mr. Trump cited a series of reasons for withdrawing, including “the World Health Organization’s mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic” and “failure to adopt urgently needed reforms.” He said the agency was demanding “unfairly high payments” from the United States, and complained that China was paying less.
This step was not unexpected. Mr. Trump has been attacking the World Health Organization since 2020, when Attack the agency Regarding its approach to dealing with the Corona virus pandemic, it threatened to withhold US funding from it. In July 2020, Mr. Trump took formal steps to withdraw from the agency.
But after losing the 2020 elections, the threat did not materialize. On his first day in office, January 20, 2021, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. blocked the law from taking effect.
Leaving the WHO means, among other things, that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will no longer have access to the global data provided by the agency. When China determined the genetic sequence of the new coronavirus in 2020, it released the information to the World Health Organization, which shared it with other countries.
Recently, the World Health Organization has become a target of conservatives because of its work to find a solution “Pandemic Treaty” To strengthen pandemic preparedness and develop legally binding policies for Member States on pathogen surveillance, rapid sharing of outbreak data, and building local manufacturing and supply chains for vaccines and therapeutics, among others.
Talks about the treaty It collapsed last year. In the United States, some Republican lawmakers saw the agreement as a threat to American sovereignty.
Lawrence O. said: 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 “painful wound” to public health but “a deeper wound to American national interests and national security.” “.
Founded in 1948 with the help of the United States, the World Health Organization is an agency of the United Nations. Its mission, according to its website, is “to address the greatest health challenges of our time and measurably advance the well-being of the world’s people.”
This includes providing aid to war-torn areas such as Gaza and tracking emerging epidemics such as Zika, Ebola and Covid-19. The WHO’s biennial budget is About $6.8 billion; The United States has traditionally contributed a large share.
According to Mr. Gostin, the US withdrawal will take some time. A joint resolution adopted by Congress upon the agency’s founding addressed the potential withdrawal, requiring the United States to provide one year’s notice and pay its financial obligations to the organization for the current fiscal year.
