94Ha Viewpoint
It is reported that the team of US President-elect Trump is pushing for the United States to withdraw from the World Health Organization on the day of the presidential inauguration on the 20th of next month. Experts warn that this will have a catastrophic impact on global health.
The Financial Times of the United Kingdom quoted several experts on Sunday (December 22) as saying that members of the Trump team revealed to these experts that they intended to withdraw the United States from the WHO. If the United States really withdraws, the WHO will lose its largest source of funding, and its ability to respond to global public health crises such as the coronavirus epidemic will be weakened.
The United States is the largest single donor to the WHO, providing about 16% of the funding for the WHO in 2022-2023.
Regarding the possible withdrawal of the United States from the WHO, Gostin, a professor of global public health at Georgetown University in the United States, said: “The United States’s move will leave a huge vacuum in global health financing and leadership. I don’t see any country that can fill this gap.”
After the outbreak of the coronavirus in 2020, Trump, who was in his first term at the time, accused the WHO of failing to respond to the epidemic and becoming a puppet of China, so he announced the withdrawal of the United States from the WHO. However, the withdrawal process was not completed, and Biden announced the restoration of relations with the WHO on the first day of his presidency in 2021.
Ash Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, who served as the White House coronavirus response coordinator for the Biden administration, said that the transition team wanted Trump to announce his withdrawal from the WHO on the day of his inauguration in order to highlight the “symbolic significance” in response to Biden’s related announcement on Inauguration Day that year.
He revealed that in fact, some people in Trump’s team wanted to stay in the WHO and promote reform, but the faction in the team that advocated withdrawal prevailed in this debate.
Gostin said that after Trump nominated several allies such as vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy to senior health positions in the new government, the relationship between the United States and the WHO became tense. However, he was not sure whether Trump was as eager to withdraw from the WHO as those members of the team.
He warned that if the United States withdrew from the WHO, European countries would be unlikely to invest more funds, and China might try to exert greater influence. “This is not a wise move because the US withdrawal means handing over leadership to China.”
Ash Jha also pointed out that WHO and other institutions are key to global cooperation in the development and distribution of vaccines and the provision of treatments for other health emergencies. “If you are not involved in these institutions, you will not be able to grasp the actual situation when the next outbreak occurs.”
Neither Trump’s team nor the WHO responded to the above report.
WHO Director-General Tedros said earlier this month that the WHO is a “unique organization” and hopes to work with US decision makers. “We are ready to cooperate. I believe that American leaders understand that the United States will only be safe if the rest of the world is safe.”
