Who wants to leave WHO?

Who has said they want to leave WHO?

Argentina and the US are the two countries that have so far announced their intention to leave WHO. At the moment, 194 nations are members.

Donald Trump, in one of his first executive orders on starting his second term as president in January, withdrew the US from supporting WHO.1 The order states that this is “due to the organisation’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.” It added that WHO “continues to demand unfairly onerous payments from the US, far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments.”

On 23 January, Italy’s deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini said he had proposed a law to follow Donald Trump’s withdrawal from WHO. A spokesperson at the time said that Prime Minister Georgina Melloni did not yet have a position on it, and no further developments have been reported.  

Salvani had written on X that, “Italy must no longer have to deal with a supranational power centre—handsomely financed by Italian taxpayers—which goes hand-in-hand with the multinational pharmaceutical companies. Let’s use those 100 million to support the sick in Italy and finance our hospitals and doctors!”

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