Top in ID: Trump withdraws U.S. from WHO, stops external health communications
President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the United States from WHO, mostly due to the belief that the U.S. unfairly pays a significant proportion of WHO’s funding, especially relative to China.
The U.S. helped to found WHO in 1948 and has been one its most significant funders. The agency asked the U.S. to pay approximately $130 million per year in membership fees in 2024 and 2025, which represents 22% of the total $578 million requested from member states. Comparatively, China was asked to contribute around 15% and no other state was asked to pay more than 8%.
WHO states that these calculations are based on each country’s wealth and population and represent only a small portion of the agency’s total budget.
“U.S. funding has been instrumental in supporting the WHO’s pandemic response,” Michele Bratcher Goodwin, SJD, LLM, and Lawrence O. Gostin, JD, co-faculty directors of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, said in a joint statement. “Without it, the organization’s ability to address global health emergencies will be significantly weakened, endangering health everywhere.”
“I can't think of one way that this makes America safer and more secure, and I can't think of one way that it advances our national interests,” Gostin told Healio.
It was the top story in infectious disease last week.
In another top story, after an HHS memo halted external communications from the CDC, FDA and NIH, the CDC’s primary medical journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report went unpublished, raising concerns among health experts.
Read these and more top stories in infectious disease below:
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