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Trump has pulled the US out of the World Health Organization – here’s why that’s sheer hypocrisy | Devi Sridhar

Donald Trump is persistent. In his first term as president, he withdrew the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) on 6 July 2020, giving the necessary one-year notice period. Soon after, Joe Biden was elected, and he reversed this executive order within days of being in office, reinstating the US support for the agency on 20 January 2021. While many hoped this would be the end of the story, Trump came back with a vengeance in his second term and immediately signed an executive order withdrawing on 20 January 2025.

This means that – buried under news of other Trump-related chaos – the US formally left the WHO at the end of last month. It is just the second time in the agency’s history a major power has left. In 1949, during the cold war, the USSR withdrew citing unhappiness with the US influence over the organisation. In 1956, with concerns over disease surveillance and spread, the USSR re-engaged with the UN system.

Trump’s justifications for leaving the WHO are similar to Nigel Farage’s attacks on the agency. First, that the WHO forced countries into lockdowns during Covid-19. This makes no sense. The WHO is a member-state body which has no legal authority to impose lockdowns, domestic public-health measures or really make countries do anything they don’t want to. Lockdowns were decisions taken by national governments, and them alone.

Another Trump claim is that the WHO is not independent. I would suggest the WHO is too independent, which is why it’s being punished. A senior WHO staff member told me that it had been pressed to align with the Maga talking points on the links between vaccines and autism, and paracetamol in pregnancy and autism, as well as climate-change denialism. When the agency pushed back that this wasn’t scientifically accurate, it was reprimanded. The WHO has also pushed back against pressure from Israel to stay quiet on the Gaza genocide and destruction of hospitals, and from Russia on the Ukraine war. To maintain credibility beyond short political cycles, the WHO must remain scientifically independent even if it costs it favour with certain leaders.

Having studied the WHO (and cowritten a book on it), it is bizarre to watch the US government attacking the very agency it has been the architect and champion of for years. The entire UN system was premised on the idea that cooperation across countries could prevent collective catastrophes like the second world war. US leadership has been central to global campaigns against smallpox, polio, HIV/Aids and reducing child mortality. Financially, too, the US has been the single largest contributor to the WHO, through assessed contributions and voluntary funding tied to specific programmes.

Prior to Trump, US leadership in global health had been bipartisan and supported by the public, from the Global Fund to Fight HIV/Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria (championed by Bill Clinton) and the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (championed by George W Bush) to Barack Obama’s response to the west Africa Ebola outbreak. Compare this with today: when I contacted several US academics about this topic, none wanted to speak on the record out of fear of losing their research funding or jobs.

Where does this leave us? Fortunately, the WHO embarked on financial reforms that mean it is less dependent on US funding and able to maintain core functions. The agency has secured 85% of the funding it needs for the 2026/27 budget, and is confident it can raise the remaining 15%. This still leaves a leadership vacuum in global health, which the EU and key countries such as Germany are trying to fill in the hope of keeping multilateralism alive. We have China and Russia increasing their bilateral ties to low-income countries, tying together global health aid with their influence. And we have health threats such as the H5N1 variant of bird flu, antimicrobial resistance and continual disease outbreaks requiring rapid information-sharing and coordinated response.

The US government knows this. I am told that in all practical ways, Trump’s leadership team is still engaging with the agency privately, while lambasting it publicly. This plays to his Maga base who need a foreign enemy to attack, while also ensuring the US has the necessary global intel on health risks that the WHO holds. Yet again, Trump says one thing publicly while doing the opposite privately. In another “emperor has no clothes” moment, the real story is that the US government is more dependent on the WHO than vice versa. That’s a wise lesson for the British public to learn before following Farage down a self-destructive anti-WHO path.