USA’s withdrawal from WHO and impact on rest of the world

On Friday, US President Donald Trump announced that he is terminating US membership in World Health Organisation as he was not satisfied with the way this international organisation is handling China’s response to Coronavirus. In a press briefing he reiterated his commitment “ to withdraw financial contribution to WHO and redirect that funds to other urgent global public health needs”.

The USA is major financial contributor to WHO providing almost $450 million a year followed by China who contributed almost one-third to what America contributes and this may be one of the reason why Trump took such stern action against WHO for not taking any significant step towards China to address the ongoing pandemic situation. USA till now lost more than one lakh citizens due to COVID19 and the overall global death figure is even worse. Entire world has to come up a with a vaccine to counter this virus disease. Many fear that even though some countries are successful in flattening curve of infected cases, yet the worst isn’t over and it may very well play havoc with change in climate conditions. Countries like USA, UK, India etc. haven’t seen peak in number of cases even though number of infected people are increasing day by day. Another factor which could have played significant role in Trump’s decision is economic recession the world is facing include USA too who has to shut off its manufacturing and other economic activities for almost two months while during that time, China started its business and production sector at fast pace. So it comes natural that Trump has justified his reason of holding its fund to WHO and accusing of biased response towards China.

Some political pundits and health experts views Trump’s decision as short-sighted and one which would eventually put US citizens health at risk. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., Chairman of the Senate Health , Education, Labor and Pensions Committee expressed his opinion in a statement that ‘Withdrawing U.S. membership could interfere with clinical trials that are essential to the development of vaccines which US citizens and others in the world needs’[1].

European Union and many Asian countries have urged President Trump to reconsider his decision of withdrawal of US membership from WHO as it was the USA who was the founding member of WHO and such decision will deeply affect economic contribution, research and development in global health sector. Whatever the future holds, it is too early to say anything on how USA’s withdrawal from WHO is going to affect global health services. But one thing can be said for sure is that the objective of Trump’s decision to pressurize China in taking responsibility for this pandemic situation is not going to bear any result and with such withdrawal USA has given golden platter to China to play dominant role with WHO member states.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/05/29/865816855/trump-says-u-s-will-withdraw-from-who-does-he-have-the-authority-to-do-it