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In a dramatic move that severed ties with the United Nations public health agency on his first day in office, President Donald Trump declared Monday that the United States is leaving the World Health Organization.
As the COVID-19 pandemic spread, Trump’s administration officially withdrew from the WHO in July 2020, continuing his longstanding criticism of the agency. The executive order’s text lists the organization’s “inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises” as justifications for the US withdrawal.
The plan would drastically alter US global health policy and further distance Washington from global pandemic efforts, which is consistent with Trump’s longstanding criticism of the UN health agency.
Trump has nominated a number of the organization’s detractors for high-level public health positions, such as vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running for secretary of Health and Human Services, which is in charge of all the main US health agencies, including the FDA and CDC.
(Newsroom staff only edited this story for style from a syndicated feed)
