“President Trump is trying to shrink the WHO, and the question is whether other high-income countries, like those in Europe, Australia, Japan and elsewhere, will pick up some of the slack,” says Vermund. “Will the Gates Foundation, which has been a very generous donor, collect some of it?” he asked. It is conceivable that others will sort things out so that we have a new administration that may be friendlier to the WHO, but I doubt they can afford the full portion of the WHO budget that the United States pays.
It’s not just the money the United States provides to the WHO, but also the staff and expertise. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has loaned a number of staff to the WHO, and I expect that the Trump administration, with a new CDC director, will bring those people home,” Vermund says. “This would create a huge gap, because WHO funds are not covering the costs for these individuals. So I think you would have an almost immediate reduction in the workforce and the removal of essential professionals within WHO.”
According to Gostin, much of the money the United States provides to the WHO is mandatory core funding, which all members are required to provide, but some of the money is specifically earmarked for issues in which the United States has a stake, such as eradicating polio. HIV/AIDS, and the process of identifying and controlling disease outbreaks before they spread and reach American shores. Without US funding, Gostin says these programs will not disappear completely, but they will be greatly weakened.
“It’s possible that polio will be on the rise again,” Justin says. “Remember, we had polio in New York’s wastewater just two years ago, and our children are not being immunized. And we’ve had other real health scares in the United States, not just coronavirus, which has killed over a million people. We’ve had Zika The next health emergency may be just a mutation or two away. It may already be here in the form of bird flu, and we’ll need the World Health Organization to help us with that.
Both Gostin and Vermund fear that withdrawing from the WHO would put the United States at the back of the line when it comes to receiving critical information such as pathogen samples and genomic sequence data, which pharmaceutical companies need to produce effective vaccines. Gostin cites how the United States relies on WHO data each year to effectively update its seasonal flu vaccine, while Vermund explains that financially, it is more efficient for the United States to fund the WHO to help “eliminate” diseases at their source, instead . From trying to process it when they arrive in the country.
“We spent more than $2 billion preparing for the Ebola virus that would hit U.S. shores in 2014 and 2015, and since we only had five or six cases, it was not cost-effective,” Vermund says. “So this is a typical example that when the United States acts alone, it will be very ineffective compared to contributing to a multinational response to control the disease in the country of origin.”