WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Thursday, the United States withdrew from the World Health Organization.
The White House said this action responds to the WHO's failures during the Covid-19 pandemic and seeks to rectify the harm from those failures inflicted on the American people.
The United States' withdrawal from the UN health agency was one of the decisions that President Donald Trump promised on his first day in office by signing an Executive Order.
Announcing the termination of U.S. membership in a joint statement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said, 'Like many international organizations, the WHO abandoned its core mission and acted repeatedly against the interests of the United States'. Thy alleged that although the United States was a founding member and the WHO's largest financial contributor, the organization 'pursued a politicized, bureaucratic agenda driven by nations hostile to American interests'.
'In doing so, the WHO obstructed the timely and accurate sharing of critical information that could have saved American lives and then concealed those failures under the pretext of acting 'in the interest of public health,' the statement added.
The Secretaries made it clear that in future, U.S. engagement with the WHO will be limited strictly to effectuate its withdrawal and to safeguard the health and safety of the American people.
They also announced that all U.S. funding for, and staffing of WHO initiatives has been stopped.
Rubio and Kennedy Jr. blamed WHO by saying, 'Americans died alone in nursing homes, the small businesses devastated by WHO-driven restrictions, and the American lives shattered by this organization's inactivity.'
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