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U.S. pullout from World Health Organization would hurt its budget

Samantha Fields Jan 22, 2025
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The U.S. contributes about 16% to 18% of the WHO’s budget — far more than any other country. John Moore/Getty Images

U.S. pullout from World Health Organization would hurt its budget

Samantha Fields Jan 22, 2025
Heard on:
The U.S. contributes about 16% to 18% of the WHO’s budget — far more than any other country. John Moore/Getty Images
HTML EMBED:
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Among the many executive orders Donald Trump signed on his first day in office is one pulling the U.S. out of the WHO, or the World Health Organization. The U.N. agency has been around since 1948 and the U.S. is its biggest funder, by far.

President Trump first tried to pull the U.S. out of the WHO back in 2020 but ran out of time when he lost that election.

When he won this time, “this was widely expected,” said Jennifer Kates, senior vice president and director of the Global Health & HIV Policy Program at the health policy nonprofit KFF.

Still, she said a U.S. withdrawal from the WHO would be a big deal for the agency. “The funding obviously would be a big hit for WHO, the expertise being removed is another.”

The U.S. contributes about 16% to 18% of the WHO’s budget — far more than any other country. It also shares a lot of knowledge, staff and data, noted Jesse Bump, a lecturer on global health policy in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“And if it’s not sharing its own information with others, and it’s not receiving information from others, public health disasters that don’t have to happen will happen, because those capacities aren’t there anymore,” he said.

It’ll take a year for the U.S. withdrawal to go into effect. The WHO said it hopes the administration will reconsider.

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