US withdraws from WHO

President Donald Trump signed an executive order initiating the withdrawal of the United States from the World Health Organization on Jan. 20

According to the White House, the executive order states the United States previously withdrew from the WHO in 2020 due to the organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic and demanding “unfairly onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments.”

The Rider tried to contact U.S. Reps. Monica de la Cruz (R-Texas) and Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas) for more information about the executive order and how it might affect our community. As of press time today, they were not available for comment.

WHO is responsible for promoting public health globally and it is connected to the United Nations.

Bryant Sculos, a UTRGV political science lecturer, said WHO is in charge of fighting against infectious diseases, as well as chronic health conditions and provides information globally about how to live a healthy life.

Sculos said the U.S. withdrawal from the organization “affects everyone.”

“Trump is not wrong when he says that the United States provides a disproportionate amount of funding for the World Health Organization,” he said.

Sculos added it can be debatable that COVID-19 management was something of a failure.

“But, it’s not like this is how epidemiology and medicine work, like, it’s not perfect,” he said. “It’s not like they just decide randomly that they’re not gonna get rid of malaria or something. It’s like no–it’s been a multi-decade struggle to try to do that.”

Sculos said, because we live in a globalized world, people travel and disease does not respect borders. It is the mission of WHO to tackle an outbreak of any type of condition. 

“If that organization’s mission is undermined by the United States withdrawing from it, including all of the money that it provides, it’s going to make us, put us all at risk,” he said. “It’s not immediately clear, like, there’s an immediate thing that’s gonna happen but, like, we’re all gonna be more at risk.”

The lecturer said “there’s no advantages” coming with the withdrawal.

“If the U.S. wanted to renegotiate how much it was giving and challenge other countries to give a higher percentage that was more equitable to the WHO, we have to stay as a member,” Sculos said.

He said he thinks President Trump is using this as an excuse to stop providing funding to the WHO.

“The United States doesn’t even provide a billion dollars,” Sculos said. “I think the most it’s ever provided is like $900 something million in funding. That is nothing. … We spend about a trillion dollars on our national defense every year.”

He added the health organization does more good to the world despite its issues.

“I think it’s an embarrassing state of affairs where the United States is undermining that, like, we don’t want the world to be healthy,” he said.