On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO) — a move that experts say will make it much harder to combat public health threats and protect Americans from infectious diseases like seasonal flu, COVID-19, and bird flu.
“The decision to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization makes Americans — and the world — less safe,” says Tom Frieden, MD, president and chief executive officer of the nonprofit health organization Resolve to Save Lives and former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
What Is the WHO?
The WHO prevents millions of deaths globally by facilitating collaboration between 193 countries in developing vaccines, identifying and monitoring the spread of new infectious diseases, and combating common health problems like cancer and heart disease, Dr. Frieden notes.
“For over seven decades, the WHO and the USA have saved countless lives and protected Americans and all people from health threats,” the WHO said in the statement, crediting this collaboration with ending smallpox and nearly eradicating polio.
Why Trump Decided to Leave the WHO
While it’s true the United States pays a large proportion of the WHO’s budget, the total WHO budget of almost $7 billion every two years is less than what it costs to run many large hospitals in the United States, says Stephen Morse, PhD, a professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City.
“The WHO would be severely hampered — and perhaps even leading to collapse — if the U.S. no longer pays to support the WHO,” Dr. Morse says.
As for any mistakes responding to COVID-19, “There’s plenty of blame to go around,” Morse adds. “Almost every country and state, with a few exceptions, badly mishandled the pandemic.”
What Leaving the WHO Could Mean for Americans
Leaving the WHO will endanger lives in the United States, Morse says. “We lose our window into disease problems in other parts of the world that might become a danger here,” Morse says. “The executive order refers to the COVID-19 pandemic, but we’d have far less information when the next pandemic starts.”
One way the WHO protects American lives is by fighting diseases overseas and preventing their spread to the United States, says William Schaffner, MD, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.
“The U.S. is the major financial supporter of the WHO, accounting for about one-fifth of the WHO’s budget,” Dr. Schaffner says. “Many public health programs in the developing world would be reduced or have to be eliminated, halting progress, if the U.S. withdraws.”
This departure from the WHO also endangers American lives because U.S. public health officials will lose access to a treasure trove of information needed to develop effective vaccines for constantly mutating infectious diseases like seasonal flu and COVID-19, Schaffner adds. It will also make it difficult to track emerging threats like bird flu or any other diseases that have the potential to become dangerous outbreaks or pandemics in the future, Schaffner adds.
“The world is an ever-smaller place; dangerous viruses ‘over there’ can be ‘over here’ within 24 hours, threatening our own population in the U.S.,” Schaffner says.
“Viruses do not need passports,” Schaffner adds. “By helping less-advantaged countries to identify and control serious communicable diseases in their own populations, that reduces the risk of those infections entering our own country.”
Pause on Federal Health Communications May Also Spell Trouble
Another move by President Trump to halt communications by the CDC and other federal health agencies will compound the risk to American lives posed by the exit from the WHO, Morse says.
Tracking and responding to emerging public health threats like bird flu depends on information from the WHO and from the CDC, which helps U.S. states share information and coordinate their responses. “Each state will be on its own now to find out what’s happening in other states,” Morse says.
