President Donald Trump announced it is cutting US ties with the World Health Organization (WHO). He claims that "China has total control over" the WHO.
“We have detailed the reforms that it must make and engage with them directly, but they have refused to act because they have failed to make the requested and greatly needed reforms,” Trump said in a speech in the White House Rose Garden.
“We will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organisation and redirecting those funds to other worldwide and deserving urgent global public health needs.”
The US remains the biggest financier of WHO. Its membership dues cost about $450m, with voluntary contributions for specific programs.
Trump gave a four-page letter to the WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on May 19. The letter discusses how the US would permanently halt its funding of the WHO and rethink its membership if the global health body did “not commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days”.
On Friday, just 10 days after the letter, he announced US withdrawal. When the ultimatum was issued, some US health officials asked the WHO to express its willingness to change to the government. This move could help change the Trump's mind. However, US sources claimed there was no dialogue between the administration and the WHO over reform.
WHA
The World Health Assembly (WHA) of member states agreed earlier in May that there should be an evaluation of the organization’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“What’s interesting, looking at the last WHA meeting for me, was a very clear sign that American influence has diminished significantly,” said Abraham Denmark, a former deputy assistant secretary of defence for East Asia.
“It was embarrassing that we weren’t able to wrangle international support for our policy goals in that meeting, and that China was able to really get what they needed out of that.”
The decision was perceived an answer to the question of whether Trump intended to come up reforms or open a discussion with the WHO. However, the president continues to blame the organization for the coronavirus outbreak in the US.
Impact of cutting ties to WHO
“It was never about reforming the WHO. That was all lies,” the Democratic senator Chris Murphy, said on Twitter. “It was always about distraction and scapegoating. Leaving castrates our ability to stop future pandemics and elevates China as the world’s go-to power on global health. What a nightmare.”
Amanda Glassman, the executive-vice president of the Centre for Global Development, said that the US had broad ties to the WHO. She noted that the move of the US could affect its influence on global health research and policymaking.
“We have very deep and long relationships with the WHO as the space where we coordinate global health policy,” Glassman said. “I think it’s totally inefficient to do it in a bilateral manner.”
Meanwhile, Beth Cameron, a biologist and former senior official in the national security council said on Twitter: “There aren’t words for how much this decision will hurt the US, our global partners, and our ability to to impact the #COVID19 pandemic that is a threat to our national and global peace and security.”
