Leaving WHO, a costly bad decision
On Jan. 22, the United States officially withdrew from the World Health Organization, an organization we have been a member of since 1948. Currently, 194 nations are part of the WHO. It employs thousands of public health professionals worldwide. It strengthens global health by coordinating a vast network of partner laboratories.
The Trump administration plans to create an alternative organization run by the U.S. that would attempt to recreate or duplicate the systems currently in place by the WHO. The estimated cost is $2 billion per year. The U.S. contributed $680 million per year to the WHO. From a public health, economic and international relations perspective, this makes no sense and will place the U.S. at greater risk from global disease threats.
By creating its own version of WHO, America stands alone in a world where disease can emerge from anywhere at any time, missing out on having 194 pairs of global disease surveillance eyes and ears. Also, America will not be part of any policies and decisions made by the WHO that will directly impact the health of Americans, as well as not receiving real-time disease intelligence information.
As we learned from COVID-19 and other global diseases like AIDS and influenza, microbes do not respect borders or respond to politics or ideology. Microbes only respect the laws of nature. Organisms, especially viruses, have one objective: survival by finding new hosts to multiply and spread. They take advantage of any opportunity humans provide, such as Trump policies that will give microbes greater opportunities to wreak havoc.