The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw the United States from @WHO is reckless and entirely unjustified. As I outlined in testimony to the Senate last week, the administration’s accusations against WHO do not stand up to scrutiny... cgdev.org/publication/te…
...and certainly do not rise to the level of abandoning the organization as the worst pandemic in a century sweeps around the world.
WHO’s handling of it has not been perfect, but did provide ample early warning and actionable guidance to countries that were paying attention.
WHO’s handling of it has not been perfect, but did provide ample early warning and actionable guidance to countries that were paying attention.
The disaster in the US results from ignoring WHO’s increasingly urgent warnings from late January onward. Had the US followed WHO’s advice on early preparedness, aggressive testing, contact tracing, and other response measures, we would be in a far better place than we are today.
The US withdrawal will have damaging consequences both for the US and the world at large. WHO makes vital contributions to the health of Americans, including through vaccine and therapeutic research and coordinating annual flu vaccines.
It advances US interests by countering global health threats like Ebola and cholera, carrying the frontline burden in places like Eastern Congo and Yemen where USG personnel cannot safely operate.
It has partnered successfully with the US on global vaccine programs and disease eradication efforts. Global polio eradication, which has for years been a US priority, will be imperiled by this decision, as will numerous other longstanding US health investments.
And weakening WHO will also reverberate across the developing world, where health ministries rely heavily on WHO technical guidance. In many countries, WHO is a de facto extension of the MoH. Undermining WHO in turn undermines those ministries and imperils their citizens' health.
WHO covers these and numerous other functions on a budget that is less than the annual budget of a US hospital system, and just a fraction of the annual spending of the CDC and NIH.
WHO *does* need reform. But the best way to rectify weaknesses in WHO and in wider global health governance is by remaining engaged and outlining a constructive vision for such reform. Not by walking away in a politicized fit of pique.
Past administrations chose reform, not withdrawal: after SARS the Bush admin helped to develop the 2005 International Health Regulations, and after Ebola in West Africa the Obama admin led member states to approve sweeping reform and reorganization of WHO’s emergency operations.
Withdrawing now, particularly on such specious grounds, will destroy US credibility and diminish US influence over the next generation of reforms that will inevitably follow the present outbreak.
And it will likely sound a death knell for the emerging US proposals for new global pandemic response mechanisms. It will be hard for other countries to align with US efforts if those efforts come across as an alternative or competitor to WHO.
Plainly put, other countries expect WHO to play a central role in any future pandemic architecture, and US efforts will fail if they ignore this reality. You can't unilaterally create a new multilateral architecture.
So this is a misguided and mendacious decision on every level. The US should reverse it at the earliest opportunity.
For more background on why this is so irresponsible, see my earlier threads here:
And here:
And here:
Or just read the op-ed that @TomBollyky and I wrote in April, which basically covers it all:
