Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) has caused predictable conniptions among public health experts. It’s the second time Trump has made this move. The first was in July 2020, six months before the end of his first term. Given that the formal process for a country to exit WHO takes over a year, there was only limited practical impact before Joe Biden was able to reverse the policy. This time, the decision has been taken at the very start of a four-year term, suggesting that the WHO faces a truly serious crisis.
The official reasons given for the withdrawal are the WHO’s mismanagement of the Covid pandemic, refusal to countenance reforms, and — in a thinly-disguised reference to China — the “inappropriate political influence of WHO member states”.
Concerns over the WHO predate the pandemic. Over many years, it has moved from focusing directly on reducing the global burden of disease towards a preoccupation with influencing public health policy in a particular ideological direction. This has seen the WHO push for the global legalisation of abortion along with the implementation of radical policies on transgender rights and sex education. Never mind that in many of its member states, the majority of people remain firmly opposed to such moves.
Indeed, the fact that the WHO’s recommendations to children aged six and even younger should include information about “early childhood masturbation” and that 9 to 12-year-olds should be enabled to “make a conscious decision to have sexual experiences or not” might be seen by some as more than enough justification for any country to leave the organisation.
However, it was the Covid pandemic that really saw momentum build for withdrawal. On almost every issue, the WHO seemed to be on the wrong side of both evidence and ethics. It acceded to Chinese pressure to dismiss the lab-leak theory, backed lockdowns, argued in favour of school closures, promoted masks even in primary schools, supported vaccinating children, and refused to oppose unethical vaccine mandates.
The ineffectiveness of most mainstream pandemic policies is well-known, to say nothing of their disastrous impact on education, mental health and economic and social wellbeing. But not only did the WHO pressure member states to implement these failed approaches, it also made strenuous efforts to ensure critical voices were shut down. The WHO actually boasts of how it worked both with social media companies and national governments, including Britain’s, to censor alternative views.
And now, far from reflecting on its failures, the WHO has sought to double down, pushing its controversial new pandemic treaty. The original draft would have given the organisation the power to force national governments to impose restrictions and mandates during a pandemic. That proved to be a step too far for many countries and the WHO was forced to tone down its proposals. But even now, the aim seems to be to entrench the WHO’s role and influence above national governments. No wonder the Trump administration, with its America First agenda, is not minded to look any more favourably on the WHO than it did in 2020.
So where does the WHO go from here? Optimists inside the organisation may believe that Trump’s announcement is really about money. The US is by far the biggest annual WHO donor (the second is the Gates Foundation), something Trump has frequently highlighted. They might judge that Trump will not want to risk China becoming even more influential in a post-US WHO and that a lower funding settlement will be enough to persuade him to bring America back into the fold.
Proceeding on that basis could prove a risky strategy. Exiting the WHO was a popular move among Trump’s core supporters. Further, Elon Musk, now so influential in the Trump administration, has long warned against countries ceding authority to supranational bodies such as the WHO, while Robert F. Kennedy Jr, nominee to be the next US health secretary, is a well-known opponent of much of its agenda.
In that context, it seems unlikely that Trump will reverse course, even if he is offered a reduced membership bill. And, if the WHO somehow manages to persuade other countries to make up for the loss of American funds, it is hard to see how it can maintain its legitimacy and influence without the US on board.
The WHO may now face a difficult choice between a gradual decline into irrelevance or undertaking a fundamental reform of its ethos and agenda. For a start, that would mean the organisation recognising the many serious mistakes it has made. Recent experience does not provide confidence that the WHO will be willing or able to go down such a path.
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Rejoice!
I will rejoice when the US actually does withdraw. I’m waiting with bated breath.
Hallelujah, may the Lord be praised
Hurrah!
Let’s hope he withdraws the USA from the United Nations and requires them to relocate to another country!
I heartily second that.
Their President was a plant on the part of communist China. He and his organisation worked with the CCP to withhold information about the new SARS lab virus over winter 2019-20, ensuring that it became a global pandemic. The objective was to influence the 2020 US Presidential election.
Objective? More likely to protect the CCP.
Good.
Any World-body is a stepping stone to world government which is then an open invitation to totalitarianism.
They should be avoided at all cost.
Good point Richard, I agree completely. These entities invariably want to grow and exert more influence. The EU has morphed from a pacifist economic plan for Western Europe into a totalitarian super state that is choking the life out of its member states.
Unfortunately, whilst in theory pan national bodies covering things such as health, environmental issues as two examples are highly sensible and necessary, you are correct in that they very quickly morph in over reach and become dictatorial based on political and social agendas.
Well said, Richard!
The WHO, like the EU and the UN, was probably setup for genuine altruistic reasons, but it has morphed, as all these supranational entities do, into an illiberal elitist vehicle of control that moonlights as a sock puppet for the CCP. Shut them down.
It makes absolute sense to have a world health organisation. But any publicly funded organisation (national or international) becomes, over time, ever more expensive, less effective, and concerned with expanding its own power … in effect a self-serving job creation scheme. That’s where WHO has found itself. Cessation of US funding might be just what’s needed.
Kill it with fire
All those cosy jobs might go. How sad.
Hope that others follow!
The “official reasons” should be enough. One is hard-pressed to think of any benefit offered by the various supranational bodies that exist, from the WHO to the UN to the others. When organizations and the people who run them are unaccountable – and seriously, who does Tedros answer to? – they will invariably attempt to expand their scope and power.
What underlies the WHO and NGOs outside of the U.S. is a singular operation with a secondary political agenda: to stir up discord in countries outside the U.S when needed. They do this by pushing gender ideology or DEI into places like India, Uganda, or Nigeria, with organizations like the WHO acting as tools to spread these ideas (with fake reports to support), which can then be weaponized. It’s not about health—it’s about creating division when needed. These organizations receive funding not because they are “caring,” but because they are covert operations, pure and simple.
A global health body could work, but only if it stays focused on its true purpose: tracking viruses and preparing for global health crises. While some might not see the need for centralized health information (those of us who travel do), many of us would appreciate a reliable way to stay informed about health emergencies. Without this focus, these organizations are just a psyop waiting for orders from Washington.
Trump’s bold moves may lead to unintended consequences. If another pandemic occurs, Europe and the U.S. will be in deeper trouble than Africa or Asia, which have more crisis-driven health systems. The West isn’t prepared, as COVID-19 has shown us—whether it was real or not.
Fully agree with you – there is kernel within the WHO that does genuinely good work in health (mainly around clean water, nutrition, and sanitation), and in the reduction of parasitic and infectious diseases.
A signal success is the African scourge Guinea Worm Disease, thanks to the [Jimmy] Carter Center and Ivermectin. But Ivermectin is a generic drug (no money to be made) and the sufferers were poor black people, so completely irrelevant.
Many African health authorities were completely mystified by the US/European hysteria about “Covid” and treatment (or rather prohibitions against treatment), but institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF rigorously enforced the Western “Covid” response narrative whether or not the recipient country had a health problem – though why a Western powers-controlled bank would weigh in on a medical matter remains a conundrum.
The world needs a health organisation. The WHO has done and could again do the job, but they are arguing themselves out of contention.
Wonderful idea originally; it’s become a left-wing, anti-western, critical-theory-infected waste of money.
Good.
All these stateless international organizations need to be destroyed. While they might have been good ideas during their inception and may even have marginal benefits still the real problem is that they are invariably captured by ideological forces and then begin to expand beyond the scope of their initial objective. They become, in effect, governments without a country.
It is worth mentioning that Trump will save the US $5 billion over his 4 year term by withdrawal now.
It leaves the UK as the top country contributor. We will pay £2 billion for that privilege over those four years but will probably be asked for another £250 million to make up the shortfall.
We should certainly slash our contribution (but won’t). Having a small expert international body to advise on the most efficacious ways of tacking contagiousness diseases which is firmly science based may be desirable but clearly an overweening expensive politicised bureaucracy is not. Unfortunately, Starmer’s Labour government will be determined to virtue signal on the world stage rather than deliver value for money for their citizens.
I suspect that the UK also intends to get the WHO pandemic treaty passed into NI/UK law by the back door – or as good as thanks to the efforts of Northern Ireland Assembly Ulster Unionist MLA, Mike Nesbitt (and whoever’s pulling his strings).
The proposed Public Health Bill is intended to be “consistent with the WHO international Health Regulations”.
https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/consultations/health/doh-public-health-bill-cons-document-july-2024.pdf
We all need to petition our governments not to pass those treaty amendments.
Long ago it became, just like it’s parent body the UN, a nakedly, left wing political organisation.
As with almost all institutions, national and Supranational, after a period of time they become dominated by Marxists
Be done with it and start again. .
The WHO not only mismanaged COVID and is imposing ideological stances on gender and abortion, perhaps its worst mismanagement is its rejection of non-combustible nicotine deliver products (vapes, heated tobacco, oral moist tobacco), that are much safer than smoking cigarettes (this is a fact, not an opinion).
Smoking kills 8 million people worldwide every year (much more than pandemic deaths), and these products provide significant harm reduction to smokers. The WHO rejects this harm reduction and issues massive disinformation campaigns denying the scientific evidence on these products.
The rejection of non-combustible products affects mostly low and middle income countries, which concentrate 80% of world smokers and whose health ministries look at the WHO for guidance.
The source of this health mismanagement is the philanthropic foundation of billionaire Michael Bloomberg that has donated over a billion USD to the tobacco/nicotine sector of the WHO and wields enormous influence on its policies. In the end, the WHO has been promoting globally Bloomberg’s nicotine prohibitionist stance at the expense of millions of lives that could be saved. A necessary reform of the WHO requires putting an end to this disastrous health mismanagement.
The WHO sources of funding are nothing short of bizarre.
For 2023, according to its audited statements, the WHO had revenues of US$4,354m. Of that sum, US$496m – fully 11% – were “assessed contributions”, i.e. membership fees. US$3,656m – 84% – were “voluntary contributions”.
Assessed contributions is how all UN agencies are typically funded. The agency draws up a budget, the budget is agreed, and all the member states assessed their contribution by reference to a GDP-based key. The agency can then spend them on the programmes the agency decided to pursue.
The WHO’s “voluntary contributions” are not made to the WHO’s general budget, but go to fund specific programmes. The Gates Foundation, and GAVI (also controlled by the Gates Foundation) as well as the Wellcome Foundation (also coordinating with the Gates Foundation) spend lavishly on vaccine programmes.
In terms of public health, we know for a fact that clean water and better nutrition have a far greater positive impact on public health than mass vaccinations, but there is no corporate profit in clean water or good nutrition. Gates Foundation, GAVI, and Wellcome all love to fund vaccine programmes. You get so much more photogenic shots of wise old white men in white lab coats benevolently pushing a needle into a poor black baby.
So yes, the US is a major funder of the WHO. But its assessed contribution is only 25% of 11%, so about 2.8% overall. That is a reduction any organisation can stomach.
Of course, the WHO will also lose the “voluntary contributions” for pro-vaccine, anti-abortion, and sundry other US pet projects. Maybe those are projects that are not worth funding in the first place?
Yes, Bill Gates is a dangerous man.
No concerns here about Jeremy Farrar and Susan Michie?? (aka “Stalin’s Nanny”)
China gave $157 million to the WHO. The USA gave $1.28 billion to the WHO. The UK gave $500 million.