Behind US Exit From WHO, a Battle Over Direction of Global Public Health

As the World Health Organization celebrated the adoption of a landmark pandemic treaty in May, the United States deepened its criticism of the United Nations agency—which it contends has become corrupt, beholden to special interests, and diverted from its core mission. While a U.S. delegation was absent from the 78th World Health Assembly in Geneva—where member states approved the world’s first pandemic agreement with 124 votes in favor, no objections, and 11 abstentions—U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered an address via video. “I urge the world’s health ministers and the WHO to take our withdrawal from the organization as a wake-up call. It isn’t that President Trump and I have lost interest in international cooperation—not at all,” Kennedy said, adding that the United States was already in contact with “like-minded” countries. He proposed an alternative global system, inviting fellow health ministers around the world to cooperate outside the limits of a “moribund” WHO....