The United States has withdrawn from the World Health Organization, or WHO, freeing itself from its constraints, as President Donald Trump promised on his first day in office. “This action responds to the WHO’s failures during the COVID-19 pandemic and seeks to rectify the harm from those failures inflicted on the American people,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in a statement.
Like many international organizations, the WHO abandoned its core mission and acted against the interests of the United States. Although the United States was a founding member and the WHO’s largest financial contributor, the organization pursued a politicized, bureaucratic agenda driven by nations hostile to American interests.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the WHO delayed declaring a global public health emergency and a pandemic during the early stages of COVID-19, costing the world critical weeks as the virus spread. During that period, WHO leadership echoed and praised China's response despite evidence of early underreporting, suppression of information and delays in confirming human-to-human transmission. The organization also downplayed asymptomatic transmission risks and failed to promptly acknowledge airborne spread.
“Even on our way out of the organization, the WHO tarnished and trashed everything that America has done for it,” stated Secretaries Rubio and Kennedy. “The WHO refuses to hand over the American flag that hung in front of it, arguing it has not approved our withdrawal and, in fact, claims that we owe it compensation. From our days as its primary founder, primary financial backer, and primary champion until now, our final day, the insults to America continue.”
“Going forward, U.S. engagement with the WHO will be limited strictly to effectuate our withdrawal and to safeguard the health and safety of the American people,” noted Secretaries Rubio and Kennedy. “All U.S. funding for, and staffing of, WHO initiatives has ceased.
The United States will continue to lead the world in public health, saving millions of lives and protecting Americans at home by preventing infectious disease threats from reaching our shores while advancing global health security through direct, bilateral, and results-driven partnerships.” The U.S. will continue to work with countries and trusted health institutions through a model which delivers real outcomes rather than the bloated and inefficient bureaucracy of the WHO.
With its official withdrawal from WHO, the U.S. will “right these injustices and bring an end to the bureaucratic inertia, entrenched paradigms, conflicts of interest, and international politics that have rendered the organization beyond repair,” declared Secretaries Rubio and Kennedy.
“We will get our flag back for the Americans who died alone in nursing homes, the small businesses devastated by WHO-driven restrictions, and the American lives shattered by this organization’s inactivity. Our withdrawal is for them.”
