President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he is withdrawing the US from the World Health Organisation, a significant move cutting ties with the United Nation’s public health agency on his first day in office.

Trump has long been critical of the WHO, and his administration formally withdrew from the organisation in July 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic continued to spread.

Advertisement

The text of the executive order cites the “organisation’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,” as reasons for the US withdrawal.

“That’s a big one,” Trump told an aide as he began to sign the executive order, pointing to his 2020 decision and his belief that the US was paying too much money to the organisation compared to other countries.

The order also said that the WHO “continues to demand unfairly onerous payments” from the US.

The plan, which aligns with Trump’s longstanding criticism of the UN health agency, would mark a dramatic shift in US global health policy and further isolate Washington from international efforts to battle pandemics.

Trump has nominated several critics of the organisation to top public health positions, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who is up for the post of secretary of Health and Human Services, which oversees all major US health agencies, including the CDC and FDA.

Trump initiated the year-long withdrawal process from the WHO in 2020 but six months later his successor, President Joe Biden, reversed the decision.

The US President has argued that the agency failed to hold China accountable for the early spread of Covid-19. He has repeatedly called the WHO a puppet of Beijing and vowed to redirect US contributions to domestic health initiatives.

A WHO spokesperson declined to directly comment but referred to the media’s comments by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a press briefing on December 10 in which he was asked whether he was concerned that the Trump administration would withdraw from the organisation.

Tedros said at the time that the WHO needed to give the US time and space for the transition. He also voiced confidence that states could finalise a pandemic agreement by May 2025.

Critics warn that a US withdrawal could undermine global disease surveillance and emergency response systems.