The World Health Organisation (WHO) chief warned Tuesday that Washington’s decision to withdraw from the UN health agency was dangerous for the United States and the rest of the world alike.
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order just hours after returning to the White House on January 20, 2025, ordering his country’s exit from the WHO.
With the one-year withdrawal process due to reach completion next week, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters he deeply regretted the move.
“Withdrawal from WHO is a loss for the United States, and it’s also a loss for the rest of the world,” he said, speaking from his agency’s Geneva headquarters.
The withdrawal, he warned, “makes the US unsafe… and makes the rest of the world unsafe, so it’s not really the right decision.”
Tedros highlighted that “there are many things that are done through WHO that benefit the US… especially the health security issues.”
“That’s why I said the US cannot be safe without working with WHO,” he said.
“I hope the US will reconsider its decision and rejoin.”
WHO’s chief legal officer, Steve Solomon, said it was a bit unclear when exactly the withdrawal would be official.
He explained to reporters that the WHO constitution does not include a withdrawal clause, but that Washington made arrangements in 1948, reserving the right to withdraw under certain conditions.
One condition was that it would need to give one year’s notice, and the second was that it would need to “meet its financial obligations to the organisation in full for the current fiscal year,” he said.
But currently, “the US for 2024 and 2025 is in arrears on its payments,” he said, without giving figures, adding that the WHO member states would need to consider, “Has the condition been fulfilled?”
At a time when dramatic cuts to international aid budgets have hit health systems worldwide hard, Tedros stressed that “funding is very important for our organisation, for WHO to really deliver”.
But he insisted that when calling for the US to return to the WHO fold, “it’s not about money.”
“What matters most is solidarity, cooperation, and for the whole world to prepare itself for any eventualities, to a common enemy like a virus, like Covid,” he insisted.
“The best immunity is solidarity.”
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