America’s departure from the WHO would harm everyone

DONALD TRUMPWHOUNWHOWHOWHOUNUNWHOWHOWHOWHOFDAWHOWHOUNUNFDAWHOWHOWHO has once again set his sights on the World Health Organisation (). On January 20th America’s newly inaugurated president signed an executive order signalling that his country would withdraw from the agency. The order cites the ’s mishandling of covid-19, failure to reform and lack of independence as reasons for withdrawal.Mr Trump’s previous attempt to arrange America’s departure from the began in July 2020, when he issued a similar order which his successor (and now predecessor) Joe Biden rescinded in January 2021. Withdrawal from the requires a year’s notice to the . António Guterres, the ’s secretary-general, will therefore need to decide whether the new notification “unpauses” the old one, leaving only six months before it takes effect, or resets the clock back to a full 12 months.There could be legal challenges, too. One may come from Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global-health law at Georgetown University who said on social media that the decision required congressional approval since it was Congress that put America in the in the first place. America has been a cornerstone of the since its foundation in 1948—as it was previously of the Pan American Health Organisation, founded in 1902, which was folded into the and became its western-hemisphere arm. But although it provides the organisation with $1.3bn a year, most of this is earmarked for specific programmes such as “polio” or “health emergencies” that it chooses to fund. America’s actual subscription for 2025 is just $218m—a minuscule fraction of the $1.7trn the federal government spends on health.The also collaborates with American agencies like the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (which, itself, has offices in 60 countries), the Food and Drug Administration () and the National Institutes of Health. Loss of this collaboration is more concerning for many inside the than the loss of income.Mr Trump has been keen to criticise the for its response to the covid-19 pandemic. An independent inquiry requested by member countries did indeed find the organisation had been too slow to declare a public-health emergency, and that international alert systems (set by members, but within which it had to work) were not swift enough.The inquiry also found, however, that February 2020 was a “lost month” for many countries—America not excepted—and that there was a failure by authorities all over the planet to take measures to halt the covid virus’s spread. Moreover, Mr Trump, who was president at the time, has been widely criticised elsewhere for playing down the severity of the virus in the outbreak’s early stages, along with failures to implement a national testing strategy or any national strategy at all. His administration also pushed the to make a drug called hydroxychloroquine available on the back of flaky evidence that it helped, and even after it was tied to 87 deaths. Nor would the (and, by extension, the non-American world) be the only loser from the United States withdrawing. America itself would lose. Its absence would limit its access to global-health data such as those American drug firms use to help design annual flu vaccines. And it could also hurt in a way that even Mr Trump might find disturbing. Leaving the ’s councils would give China an opportunity to increase its soft power by presenting itself as the leader of efforts to keep the world healthy.This week’s executive order might not, though, be the end of the matter. As happened in 2020, it could be a prelude to negotiation. In 2020 Tedros Ghebreyesus, then and now the ’s director-general, told that America asked for concessions in order not to leave. On that occasion he felt unable to comply with them. However, if further negotiations are not on the cards, America’s departure would weaken the apparatus of global-health security and might sow the seeds of future outbreaks of disease from which it, too, would be at risk.