The World Health Organization (WHO) will discuss budget cuts during its February 3-11 Geneva meeting.
The discussion follows President Donald Trump signing an executive order pulling the United States from the WHO. The order describes the WHO’s “mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states” while continuing to “demand unfairly onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments.”
Between 2024-2025, the United States provided about $988 million to the WHO.
According to reports, the executive board is considering cutting base programs from $5.3 billion to $4.9 billion. Its total budget for 2026-2027 is set at US$ 7,473.2 billion.
“With the departure of the biggest financial contributor, the budget could not be ‘business as usual,'” the budget document read, as per Reuters.
The budget document further explains that U.S. funding “provides the backbone of many of WHO’s large-scale emergency operations,” according to the Associated Press.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged budget meeting attendees to contact U.S. officials and encourage them to reconsider the withdrawal.
“We continue to give them information because they need it,” Tedros said. “We would appreciate it if you continue to push and reach out to them to reconsider.”
Upon withdrawing the U.S. from the WHO, Trump said, “So, we paid $500 million to [the] World Health Organization when I was here, and I terminated it. China, with 1.4 billion people, we have 350 [million]
“But, let’s say we have 325, they have 1.4 billion, they were paying $39 million, we were paying $500 million,” he explained. “Seemed a little unfair to me, so that wasn’t the reason, but I dropped out.”
