President Donald Trump’s decision to take the US out of the World Health Organization (WHO) – made just hours after his January 20 inauguration by executive order – is causing shock waves among public health experts in Israel and around the world.
Large numbers of leading American scientists and doctors who work for the WHO in various regions and in Geneva will be fired and sent home. They are the leaders in fighting for public health, researching disease prevention, promoting vaccinations, and more. It’s his second attempt to pull the US out of the agency; his earlier plan, introduced during his first term, was reversed by former president Joseph Biden.
“It’s a devastating choice,” Dr. Dorit Nitzan told The Jerusalem Post. She worked for 17 years at the WHO and now works at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba.
Universities, leading public health experts and others abroad have in huge numbers denounced Trump’s decision. Prof. Stefano Bertozzi of the University of California at Berkeley spoke of the great risks posed by the US leaving the WHO. The international agency, part of the UN, was founded in 1948 and includes 194 countries working together to fight the world’s toughest public health problems. It is the cornerstone of global health efforts, with a multinational staff fighting both communicable diseases – like COVID-19, Zika, and HIV – and chronic conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. With a biennial budget of $6.8 billion, WHO also works to fight malnutrition, deliver vaccines, and provide assistance and technical guidance to people in poor and battle-scarred regions of the world.
The US is among the agency’s largest donors, giving $1.28 billion in 2022/2023. They were followed by $856 million from the German government, and $830 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The WHO has backed the Alma-Ata Declaration on primary health care, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and revision of the International Health Regulations – an international agreement that outlines roles and responsibilities in preparing for and responding to global health emergencies.
Nationalistic policy
TRUMP HAS long criticized the WHO for what he has called “failure to adopt urgently needed reforms.” He has also complained that the US financial contribution to the international organization is “onerous,” even though it’s just “peanuts” for the US, which contributed $18 billion to the UN in 2022 alone.
“His policy is nationalistic in general, not just health,” said Dr. Shelly Kamin-Friedman, a teaching associate at the University of Haifa’s Faculty of Health Sciences and at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s School of Public Health in Beersheba.
“America donates to the UN a sum that is about the annual budget of a large American hospital,” she said. “It’s not just money; it’s the idea of American First. Trump doesn’t understand that promoting health is also good for the US. If there are pathogens in other countries, they will reach America as well.
“I don’t know why our Health Ministry refuses to publicize its opinion,” Kamin-Friedman added.
She is currently writing a journal article about the pandemic agreement being discussed by the worldwide health agency and why it has to be advanced. “Trump is correct that the WHO didn’t do its best during the COVID-19 pandemic; it must do reforms and be transparent, but that doesn’t mean US experts should be pulled out. There are groups inside the WHO that are suggesting reform,” she said.
“Israel has a clear interest to remain in the WHO, to share information, such as if there is polio in Gaza. Enemy countries that surround us don’t provide it. The decision may induce other countries to leave, and it could be taken over by Russia and China, which has money, but the experts won’t be there.”
The AP news agency reported that Prof. Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University in Washington, who is director of the WHO Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law, said the US withdrawal would “make the world far less healthy and safe. This is the darkest day for global health I’ve ever experienced,” he said.
Trump’s excuse in 2021 “was due in large part to what he felt was its slow response to the pandemic, accusing the WHO of not doing more to investigate the outbreak in China before it subsequently spread throughout the rest of the world,” Gostin said.
“In our globally interconnected era, cooperating in reducing the spread of deadly communicable and infectious diseases that can come to our shores is putting America first,” Dr. Jeffrey Singer of the department of Health Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, told US News and World Report. “Trump could be sowing the seeds for the next pandemic.”
CNN quoted Francois Balloux, director of the Genetics Institute at University College London, who pointed to the near-universal upward trend in life expectancy since WHO’s founding as an achievement for which the agency also deserves credit. He added that “during his latest election campaign, Trump was more brazen, calling the organization ‘nothing more than a corrupt globalist scam that disgracefully covered the tracks of the Chinese Communist Party.’”