W.H.O.......run by a bunch of servile mooching cadging chimps........america deserves better ....... i hate those bastards ....... them...... and FEMA,...... bunch of macho...... fruity ...... dodgy bastards ........could not do shit .......they are broke .....FEMA........ that is good riddance au revoir ........fuck off !!!!>....nice one donald
What Leaving the WHO Means for the U.S and the World
President Donald Trump signs executive orders, including one that withdraws the U.S. from the World Health Organization, in the Oval Office on Jan. 20, 2025. Credit - Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Bloomberg—Getty Images
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization (WHO)—a move that experts say makes the U.S. and other countries less safe from infectious diseases and other public-health threats.
“For Americans it may not be obvious immediately what the impact will be, but given the world we live in and all of the factors that are driving more disease outbreaks, America cannot fight them alone,” says Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the school of public health at Brown University and former White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator. “We need an effective WHO to not just keep the world safe from these diseases, but to keep Americans safe from these diseases.”
"The bottom line is that withdrawing from the WHO makes Americans and the world less safe," says Dr. Tom Frieden, president and CEO of the nonprofit health organization Resolve to Save Lives and former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In a statement responding to Trump’s order, the WHO says it “regrets” the U.S.’s decision. “We hope the United States will reconsider and we look forward to engaging in constructive dialogue to maintain the partnership between the USA and WHO, for the benefit of the health and well-being of millions of people around the globe.”
Here's what to know about the U.S.'s withdrawal from the global health organization and what it might mean for the health of Americans and people around the world.
The background
This is the second time Trump has attempted to withdraw from the WHO. In 2020, during the pandemic and toward the end of his first term, Trump submitted a letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations stating the U.S.’s intention to withdraw. Though U.S. funding stopped, a withdrawal didn't happen: About six months later, then-President Biden in his first day in office wrote back to the Secretary General saying that the U.S. would remain a member of the WHO.
In the new executive order, Trump cites the WHO’s “mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states.” Trump, along with other public-health experts, have previously criticized the agency for not holding China more accountable for its slow response to the WHO's investigation of COVID-19's origins.
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The order also says that the U.S.’s member dues—which ranged from $100 to $122 million over the past decade, the highest that any member pays—are “unfairly onerous” and “far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments." (By comparison, while China has a similar assessment, its population is four times the size of the U.S.) The U.S. also contributed far more in voluntary funding in recent years; in 2022-2023, for example, it provided a total of nearly $1.3 billion to the health agency.
What happens next?
In the WHO's agreement with the U.S., the U.S. would provide one year’s advance notice and pay any remaining balance to the organization in order to leave. But that agreement, made in 1948 when the WHO had just been created, was made through a joint act of Congress. It’s not clear whether Congress would have to act to implement the withdrawal.
Lawrence Gostin, professor and chair of global health law at Georgetown University and director of the O’Neill Institute, says Trump’s decision may open him up to legal action. “Trump made a unilateral decision to pull out of WHO,” Gostin wrote on X. “But we joined WHO in 1948 by an act of Congress. Trump needs Congress’ approval to withdraw. As director of a WHO Center, I am considering a lawsuit.”