Category World News

The United States has a lot of influence over how global health programs and policies are headed, and for decades so. According to health policy experts, President Donald Trump issued three executive orders on his first day in office, which might signal the end of the era.

The US will likely not be present when the WHO executive board convenes next in February due to Trump’s order to withdraw from the organization. The WHO is shaped by its members: 194 countries that set health priorities and make agreements about how to share critical data, treatments, and vaccines during international emergencies. With the US missing, it would cede power to others.

Kenneth Bernard, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and top biodefence official under the George W. Bush administration, said, “Withdrawing from the WHO leaves a gap in global health leadership that will be filled by China.” “]This] is clearly not in America’s best interests”.

The executive orders to end their cooperation with the WHO and to review how US policy toward international aid is interpreted refer to the WHO’s “mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic” and claim that US aid is intended to “destabilize world peace”. In action, they echo priorities established in Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership”, a conservative policy blueprint from the Heritage Foundation.

The 922-page report says the US “must be prepared” to withdraw from the WHO, citing its “manifest failure”, and advises an overhaul to international aid at the Department of State.

According to the Biden Administration, “the Biden Administration has deformed the organization by using it as a global platform to pursue a divisive political and cultural agenda that promotes interventions against perceived systemic racism,” it states.

The US may step back as one of the world’s largest healthcare funders, especially in low-income nations, because it funds both international and domestic initiatives like the WHO and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

The Council on Foreign Relations’ director of global health, Tom Bollyky, said, “This not only makes Americans less safe, but it also makes the citizens of other countries less safe.”

He continued, citing policies that restrict travel to nations with outbreaks of disease as “the US cannot wall itself off from transnational health threats.” The majority of the evidence in favor of travel bans suggests that they detract from domestic safety efforts and create a false sense of security.

Less than 0.1 percent of US GDP

Technically, countries cannot withdraw from the WHO until a year after official notice. However, Trump’s executive order mentions his 2020 termination notice. If Congress or the public&nbsp, pushes back, the administration can argue that more than a year has elapsed.

Trump’s plan to suspend funding for the WHO in 2020 is unconstitutional. US contributions to the agency hit a low of $163m during that first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, falling behind Germany and the Gates Foundation. Former US President Joe Biden reinstated payments and membership. In 2023, the country gave the WHO $481m.

As for 2024, Suerie Moon, a co-director of the global health centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute, said the Biden administration paid biennium dues for 2024-25 early, which will cover some of this year’s payments.

The executive order specifically mentions “unfairly onerous payments” as justification for the WHO withdrawal. As the richest nation in the world, the US has typically received more money than other nations because its dues are a percentage of their gross domestic product (GDP).

About 4% of US federal expenditures are made up of the WHO’s funds annually, or about 4% of the country’s overall budget for global health. The WHO’s budget, which is about a third of the $3.4 billion that the CDC, which received $ 9.3 billion in core funding in 2023, accounts for.

The WHO funds support programmes to prevent and treat polio, tuberculosis, HIV, malaria, measles and other diseases, especially in countries that struggle to provide healthcare domestically. Additionally, it responds to health emergencies in conflict-stricken areas, including those in areas like Gaza, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, among others.

The WHO sounded its most alarming alarm, a public health emergency of global concern, in January 2020. It regularly updated the public and gave countries advice on how to protect citizens over the course of two years as well as screening diagnostic tests and potential COVID drugs.

Experts have cited agency errors, but numerous analyses have revealed that internal issues contribute to the US having one of the highest COVID deaths worldwide.

On January 30, Bollyky stated, “Every country received the WHO’s notification of a public health emergency of international concern.” “South Korea, Taiwan, and others responded aggressively to that – the US did not”.

‘ It’s a red herring ‘

Nonetheless, Trump’s executive order accuses the WHO of “mishandling” the pandemic and failing “to adopt urgently needed reforms”. Some changes have been made by the WHO through bureaucratic procedures involving contributions from the participating nations. Last year, for example, the organisation passed several amendments to its regulations on health emergencies. These include guidelines for coordinated funding and transparent reporting.

“If the Trump administration tried to push for particular reforms for a year and then they were frustrated, I might find the reform line credible”, Moon, from the Geneva Graduate Institute, said. “But to me, it’s a red herring”.

“I don’t buy the explanations”, Stanford University’s Bernard said. “This is not an issue of money”, he added. There is no reason to leave the WHO, not even considering our issues with China.

Trump has alleged that the WHO is “inappropriate political influence” by referring to China’s failure to openly investigate COVID’s origin in the executive order.

In a video posted to social media in 2023, Trump claimed that “the World Health Organization shamelessly covered the Chinese Communist Party’s tracks every step of the way.”

On multiple occasions, the WHO has called for transparency from China. The agency does not have the legal authority to force China, or any other country, to do what it says. Trump’s assertions that a WHO-pending pandemic treaty would violate US sovereignty are also discredited by this fact. Instead, the agreement aims to outline how nations can cooperate more effectively during the upcoming pandemic.

Trump’s executive order calls for the US to “cease negotiations” on the pandemic agreement. As discussions progress, the pharmaceutical industry may lose one of its steadfast supporters.

The US and the European Union have sided with lobbying from the pharmaceutical sector to uphold strict patent laws for medications and vaccines in the negotiations so far. They have objected to efforts by middle-class nations in Latin America, Asia, and Africa to enact licensing agreements that would enable more businesses to produce medicines and vaccines when supplies are constrained. If COVID vaccines had been available in every country in the world by 2021, according to a study in the Nature Medicine journal, more than one million lives might have been saved.

“Once the US is absent – for better and for worse – there will be less pressure on certain positions”, Moon said. “In the pandemic agreement negotiations, we may see weakening opposition towards more public-health-oriented approaches to intellectual property”.

“This is a moment of geopolitical shift because the US is making itself less relevant”, said Ayoade Alakija, chair of the Africa Union’s Vaccine Delivery Alliance.

Alakija suggested that emerging Asian and African nations with emerging economies could now invest more money in the WHO, alter their policies, and set goals that the US and European countries that are battling the Ukraine war had previously opposed. “Power is shifting hands”, Alakija said. In the long run, that might lead to a more just and equitable world.

Echoes of Project 2025

In the near term, however, the WHO is unlikely to recoup its losses entirely, Moon said. About 15% of the US government’s budget is typically made up of funds. A lack of funds may prevent many people from receiving life-saving treatments for HIV, malaria, and other diseases, in addition to Trump’s executive order that temporarily suspends international aid for 90 days.

The WHO’s scientific collaboration, which takes place at about 70 locations across US institutions like Columbia University and Johns Hopkins University, is another loss. Through these networks, scientists share findings despite political feuds between countries.

The secretary of state is required to “assure the department’s programs are in line with an America First foreign policy” by a third executive order. It follows the executive order to suspend international aid while checking whether it complies with American foreign policy. According to that order, US aid has been used to “destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly opposed to harmonious and stable relations.”

These and the climate policies’ executive orders are in line with Project 2025’s policy goals. Although Trump and his new administration have distanced themselves from the Heritage Foundation playbook, CBS News discovered that at least 28 of Project 2025’s principal authors had jobs under Trump’s first administration.

Russell Vought, who previously served as the Office of Management and Budget director during Trump’s first term and has received a number of nominations for the project, was one of Project 2025’s principal architects. The America First Legal Foundation, a group led by Trump adviser Stephen Miller, has contributed to Project 2025 in part because it has received complaints from “woke corporations.”

Project 2025 recommends reducing international aid for programs and organizations that are focused on addressing issues like climate change and reproductive healthcare, as well as deregulating businesses and lowering taxes as a means of achieving economic stability.

According to some experts, the executive orders appear to focus more on ideological issues than strategic positioning.

A final truce has been reached. We finally can breathe a sigh of relief after 15 months of protracted genocidal war. Many of us have also had the opportunity to go back to what is left over from our previous homes.

The world appears to be tussling over who won, even though we enjoy our bomb-free time. Is Israel triumphant? Or can Hamas win the battle? Or do they win thanks to the brave Palestinians?

I am a nurse, not a pundit, so I have no answers to offer. But let me tell you, dear reader: The world should not be deceived by our survival. In Gaza, being alive does not equate to being heroic. Escaping death is not a victory. We hardly managed to escape. Palestinians in their tens of thousands did not.

The end of the world war was a circle in terms of genocide. No beginning or end, no direction were we heading in the right direction. We just kept going in a circle, every day, returning to the beginning.

Every day, every family had to go out in search of drinking water, water for washing, food and something to make a fire with – the very basics. If they were ever to be found, it would have taken hours to get all of these. Bread – what we thought was a given, a right – became a struggle to find. Families ran out of money. Aid organisations ran out of rations. At some point, even bug-infested flour and expired canned food became a luxury.

Only illness or death could have broken this circle. People would go through with the custom of grieving and burying their loved ones.

The Israeli army’s brutal killings of Palestinian children, women, and men were widely reported outside the country as images and videos of their release. However, they did not observe the chronically ill or those who had incurable diseases in their other, silent, agonizing deaths.

Without antibiotics, we had patients who died from infections. We occasionally saw kidney problems happen because dialysis was once only offered at a very few medical facilities and at some point. Although many of these deaths could have been avoided, they were not added to the total number of genocides committed.

In the alleys of the displacement camps, one would see the grieving survivors, sobbing or sitting silently. They would also go back in time after escaping death.

There was no longer room in the heart for more escape from death after so many months of collective suffering, oppression, and longing. I, like many other Palestinians, became frighteningly calm, numb.

Not that long ago, we had been filling the earth with noise, smiles and life. Our biggest hopes and dreams had been residing within us. But we could no longer recognise ourselves. We don’t compare to other people. We are not us”! we thought.

Because everyone was in the same dark place, it felt like there was no place to find comfort or no one to explain what was happening inside. The collective suffering was so great.

But the funny thing about mass pain and mass death, dear reader, is that they push you to cling onto life, despite everything – especially despite your occupier. You learned to make the most of Gaza, but everything in Gaza demanded your death.

Indeed, we are no longer us, but we are not dead. To carry on the struggle and to live longer, new versions of ourselves were created.

People would still experience satisfaction or a sense of purpose in the never-ending circle of time. I did it by going for long walks in search of coffee while volunteering as a nurse at a temporary clinic. These were my acts of defiance, of living.

I tried to see the other side of the struggle, but it was hard for me. I frequently laughed at the realization that I had finally lost the weight I had previously struggled to do with other healthy diets.

In the harsh life of a tent, I witnessed the white entangling my mother’s hair. But we had a laugh about it, too. I was aware that using these hues wouldn’t defeat her. She is the most adept at subjugating colors to fit her, and she loves them.

We have seen apocalyptic scenery as we emerge from our shelters and tents after 15 months of hell. The dead that have been rescued from under the rubble are still being counted, and only their names can be found on shoes or shirts.

I look through the destruction and I see us, the survivors. We were able to survive despite our lack of heroes, despite the fact that we are people who adore life. Dear reader, is clinging onto life a victory?