Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
President Trump issued an executive order on Monday night withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization (WHO).
This is the second time Trump has tried to pull the country out of the public health organization, having done so a few months before the end of his first term.
Finally, former President Biden joined the WHO before the end of the one-year waiting period required to leave the organization. It appears more likely that the United States will complete its withdrawal this time — and become one of the few countries ever to do so in the organization’s nearly 80-year history — given that Trump issued his executive order on first day of his term. But it remains unclear what the decision may mean for the future of the US, the WHO and global public health if it does.
“There’s not a lot of clarity on this,” said Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health and former White House COVID-19 response coordinator. “Part of that is because we’re in uncharted territory. Nothing like this has happened in recent memory.”
What must the US do to withdraw from the WHO?
Nothing in the WHO constitution prevents a member from withdrawing from the organization, so the US option to withdraw does not appear to be broken. international law.
However, there has been some debate about whether Trump would need congressional approval to leave the WHO.
The US joined the organization through a joint congressional resolution in 1948. The resolution reserves the country’s right to withdraw in the future, a 2020 reportof the Congressional Research Service noted, but “does not specify” whether such removal can be effected by the president alone or by the president acting jointly with Congress.
It requires the United States to give one year’s notice of its intention to withdraw from the WHO and to pay all of its current financial obligations to the organization before leaving. That’s a sizable amount of money considering how much the US funds the WHO: nearly 20 percent of the organization’s roughly $6.7 billion biennial budget in 2023 came from the US, according to the WHO.
The Trump administration could face lawsuits against its order, complicating or possibly delaying the process.
Lawrence Gostin, director of the WHO Collaborating Center for National and Global Health Laws, confirmed to The Hill that he and his legal team are considering challenging the decision in court.
On a Mondaypublish to XGostin argued that Trump cannot withdraw from the organization without congressional approval. “His decision is too catastrophic to make without Congress and the courts,” he wrote.
What would withdrawal mean for global public health?
If the US leaves the WHO, the effects on the organization would be “huge”, according to Gostin. Historically, the country has been the main funder of the WHO.
The United Nations health organization could also lose all US government staff working there. According to public health experts, losing this amount of funding and a significant portion of staff could significantly weaken multiple public health initiatives within the institution.
It could also make it harder for WHO to identify and combat any new disease outbreaks or pandemics.
In the event of an outbreak, the US has historically sent scientists, researchers and other global health workers wherever an outbreak occurs in the world to collect data and provide vaccines, treatments and tests. If the United States is no longer part of the WHO, it will be much harder to do any of this work, making it easier for outbreaks to get worse, according to Jha.
“Beyond having a devastating effect there, it dramatically increases the likelihood that someone with Ebola will get on a plane and end up in Dallas or San Francisco,” he said.
What would it mean for the US?
“Trump’s decision will reverberate around the world, but the biggest damage is to US national interests and security,” Gostin said.
Among other things, he said, it would mean that all US organizations working with the WHO could struggle to do their jobs in the future. Excluding public health agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from WHO initiatives would mean they would lose what he described as vital data collected by the organization on circulating viruses.
“This could put the United States at the back of the line in developing life-saving vaccines and treatments,” Gostin added. “Trump’s decision will not make America healthy, it will make us much more vulnerable and alone.”
The United States was one of the founding member states of the WHO in 1948 and has maintained a relationship with the organization ever since. Very few countries are not members of the WHO, and there is only one member of the UN that is not currently a member state of the organization, Liechtenstein, so the United States would be largely on its own when it comes to facing threats to public health at home and abroad. , health experts told The Hill.
According to Gostin, US pharmaceutical companies would lose “full and rapid” access to pathogen data needed for vaccine development.
And in order to control disease and outbreaks, the US government should establish public health data use agreements with essentially every country on the planet, according to Jha.
“We will not want to establish 193 bilateral relationships with 193 different countries to share data, that will be a nightmare,” Jha said. “That is not feasible and that is one of the reasons why the WHO exists.”
Can the US return to the WHO?
It is possible for a former WHO member to return to the organization after leaving. Amid Cold War tensions at the WHO, the Soviet Union and some of its satellite states in Eastern Europe withdrew from the organization in 1949, but returned in 1956.
In his executive order on Monday, Trump said the United States was withdrawing from the WHO “due to the organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that originated in Wuhan, China and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms and its inability to demonstrate independence from the undue political influence of WHO member states.” It also stated that the organization “continues to demand unfairly onerous payments” from the US
Jha believes that if the WHO begins to implement reforms and makes a compelling case why the US should stay, there is a chance that Trump could rescind this order and “claim victory.”
Those reforms could include creating term limits for leadership and allowing an investigator-general, appointed outside WHO, to study and report on the organization’s effectiveness, he said. Yeah.
