Leaving the World Health Organization is Bad for Public Health
Media Contact:
Megan Manning
manningm@ash.org
(202) 659-4310
WASHINGTON, DC – January 21, 2025 – Less than a day into his second term, President Trump began the process to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO). During his first administration, Trump gave formal notice of the United States’ withdrawal from the WHO, which President Biden reversed his first day in office in 2021. Unfortunately for public health, we are back in this position, and this time the Trump Administration has the 12 months necessary to make the withdrawal a reality.
The World Health Organization is the leading agency for international health in the United Nations system and a key platform to find solutions to global health challenges. The WHO works with 194 Member States, across six regions, and from more than 150 offices.
ASH, our colleagues, public health advocates, and leaders around the world are appalled by this action. “This is the darkest day for global health I’ve ever experienced,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health at Georgetown University in Washington and director of the WHO Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. “Trump could be sowing the seeds for the next pandemic.”
“ASH is deeply disheartened by this decision,” said ASH Executive Director Laurent Huber. “The Trump Administration is removing the United States from an organization that encourages collaboration and cooperation to protect the right to health of everyone around the world. This will set back progress in tobacco control, sustainable development, and many other areas of public health.”
“ASH and our dedicated partners will remain engaged with the WHO, picking up the slack of the US Government and doing our part to ensure Americans have access to global best practices in tobacco control,” Huber continued.
The WHO serves as a platform to develop solutions to global health challenges. For example, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), the first international global health treaty, was negotiated under the auspices of WHO, a clear example of how the WHO assists in finding solutions to global health challenges.
Due to ASH’s work on the tobacco treaty, as well as the non-communicable disease agenda, we have a long-standing working relationship with the World Health Organization. Many of the core principles of our organization are shared by WHO. We both believe in evidence-based approaches. We both believe in the power of world-wide collaboration. Most importantly, we both believe that “the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.” Otherwise known as the right to health, this right is enshrined in the WHO Constitution, and is a fundamental human right that ASH strives to achieve through every aspect of our work.
The WHO already has a limited budget. For 2020 and 2021, its budget for carrying out its programs was $4.8 billion, or $2.4 billion per year, about the size of a large U.S. hospital, or one-quarter of the budget for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In addition to communicable diseases, like the novel coronavirus, Ebola, malaria, and others, the World Health Organization works, among myriad other things, on non-communicable diseases such as cancers, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, lung diseases and risk factors, such as tobacco. U.S expertise, technical assistance and resources are critical to the WHO.
As our colleagues wrote in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), “The threat to WHO and global health have perhaps never been greater. It is vital that the international community stand up to support a robust and resilient World Health Organization.”
We agree. ASH stands with the World Health Organization. We encourage everyone who is able to donate to the World Health Organization; to help fight diseases caused by tobacco, and to achieve the highest attainable standard of health for all people around the world.
Click here to donate to the World Health Organization.
ACTION ON SMOKING AND HEALTH
Founded in 1967, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) is America’s oldest anti-tobacco organization, dedicated to a world with ZERO tobacco deaths. Because tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death worldwide, ASH supports bold solutions proportionate to the magnitude of the problem. https://ash.org
