The World Health Organization
The World Health Organization (WHO) is crucial. And nearly every country on Earth would agree.
Every country on Earth, except the United States. In these past few months, the Trump administration has routinely assaulted the WHO, citing it’s “China-centric” attitude. Trump has formally requested withdrawing from the WHO altogether, which will go into effect on July 6, 2021. It is important to note that only the U.S has the luxury of ending its membership with the WHO. Literally, after the WHO's founding in 1948, Congress passed a joint resolution outlining the circumstances under which withdrawal could be achieved. Luxury is actually a bad term to use. It’s more like exceptionalism; only we reap terrible consequences. The WHO has been apart of major health campaigns, including eradicating smallpox, reducing measles, TB, and polio, and developing the seasonal flu vaccine. Of course, it’s not a perfect organization (citing their slow response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the Ebola outbreak in which they admitted they were under-prepared. )
National Geographic talks about the ramifications of the. U.S leaving the WHO:
“In 2018-2019, the United States was the top contributor to the WHO, with $893 million. Its contributions account for about 15 percent of the WHO’s biennial budget.”
“This funding shortfall would gut the WHO’s ability to respond to global emergencies—such as the current one—by reducing the resources for providing vaccines and tracing outbreaks. A reduced budget could jeopardize endeavors like the Solidarity Trial, an international research endeavor the WHO launched to find treatments for COVID-19, as well as the agency's work to equip its members with vital medical supplies. It would also devastate the many public health campaigns the WHO operates, from combating tuberculosis to promoting children’s health.”
“Withdrawal would also mean cutting off access to the WHO’s global system for sharing data and vaccine research during a pandemic—while making the world more vulnerable to future pandemics. “We’d lose a very important link to our understanding of where health threats are emerging,” Kachur says. He points out that the WHO could no longer rely on the expertise of U.S. scientists who currently advise the organization—and the U.S. would also forfeit some of its ability to influence scientific standards and practices across the globe.”
What does the U.S plan to do instead? According to the most recent update I could find from the White House, a press release: “This redirection includes reprogramming the remaining balance of its planned the Fiscal Year 2020 assessed WHO contributions to partially pay other UN assessments. In addition, through July 2021, the United States will scale down its engagement with the WHO, to include recalling the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) detailees from WHO headquarters, regional offices, and country offices, and reassigning these experts. U.S. participation in WHO technical meetings and events will be determined on a case-by-case basis.”
Arguably of the biggest powers the WHO has, the ability to declare a public health emergency of international concern and issue recommendations on how countries should respond through the development of policy and interpretation of data. The catch? It has no power on its own to enforce anything. It enforces yet another humbling truth about health- it is based on cooperation, trust, and selflessness- both globally and domestically. The WHO works with countries that work with them.
“The fact that science is a process of continually revising and updating findings isn’t a source of weakness. Instead, science’s capacity for self-correction actually lends it strength as a method of inquiry. It does mean, though, that we usually acquire knowledge about the world slowly and in small bits and pieces.”
For a full rundown of everything the WHO does, you can check it out here.
But know that they have a lot of responsibility with a current budget of $2.4 billion. For context, the average U.S hospital costs that much to run. The WHO gets funding through assessed contributions (membership dues) + voluntary donations. Trump criticizes how little China pays each year and how much the U.S pays, but that goes back to the Reagan administration and its ‘Zero Growth Policy.’
“Critically, the Reagan administration and other major member state contributors pushed a “zero-growth” policy for WHO’s regular budget, which eventually froze states’ mandatory dues to the organization at nominal 1990s levels. (The US assessed contribution 25 years ago was $104 million. In 2020 it was $120 million.) The budgetary vacuum created by this policy left the door open for increased “extra-budgetary” funding, supported entirely by voluntary contributions from member state donors and private organizations. This marked the beginning of a long-term budgetary crisis that WHO still labors under. Voluntary contributions, which WHO typically can only use for the purposes designated by their donors, have accounted for an increasingly large portion of WHO’s budget pie. Up from 20 percent in the 1980s, voluntary contributions now comprise more than 75 percent of WHO’s finances. In WHO’s last bi-annual budget cycle from 2018-2019, the United States provided $650 million, or about 11 percent of WHO’s entire funding, through this type of specified contribution. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was the second-largest donor with contributions totaling $520 million, more than every other country.”
Long story short, we pay so much because of something we did- and we froze other member states from giving more, having the WHO to rely on donations. So much so that the second biggest donor is a nonprofit organization- rather than another country.
The Trump administration says that ‘the WHO mishandled the pandemic because they are deferential to China,’ and in a Last Week Tonight episode, John Oliver breaks down how each part of these statements may be true, while not being true together.
“The WHO is deferential to China”: Member states have accepted China’s insistence that Taiwan not be accepted as an individual entity to the organization, and they have boldly praised China’s response and containment to the pandemic, and that didn’t age too well. Oliver brilliantly argues that the WHO needs to be diplomatic to get information and resources on the ground and investigate the new emergence of health outbreaks.
“The WHO mishandled the pandemic”: Of course it did. But that mishandling has nothing to do with China.
So what is the alternative? If the White House thinks that the U.S will be greeted with open arms when they arrive at some other border to complete a public health mission……well, they have another thing coming. According to this ProPublica article:
The Trump administration’s plan to bypass the WHO and address global health problems directly with foreign governments will run into trouble in the Middle East, South Asia, Africa and other regions where Americans encounter hostility or have difficulty operating, critics said.
“People coming into countries in WHO shirts to work on polio or AIDS are less threatening,” said former Ambassador Jimmy Kolker, a veteran health diplomat who represented the United States at WHO meetings until 2017. “It is easier to get collaboration from a skeptical country or population through WHO. It facilitates access.”
It is fanciful to think that other nations will accept a U.S.-led health initiative as a substitute for the WHO, Kolker said.
“No one is looking for U.S.-based alternatives to WHO,” he said. “Dead on arrival. There is no way they are going to be supported or even accepted.”
It seems to be Trump’s administration policy method: if it doesn’t work or if you don’t understand- walk away from it. But I have always been taught that if something isn’t working- the only way you can have a say in fixing the problem is staying. There is no alternative. So if we have criticisms about the WHO, we should at least keep our membership to voice those concerns- without harming millions of people and stopping progress on eradicating diseases.
For further material on The WHO, watch John Oliver’s video, and an Envoy address President Trump below.