By Emma Farge
GENEVA, Dec 11 (Reuters) – The World Health Organization chief said on Thursday that he was still hoping the U.S. administration would reconsider its decision to withdraw from the organisation next month, saying that its exit would be a loss for the world.
In one of his first acts as U.S. president, Donald Trump signed the order to withdraw, saying the global health agency had mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic and was too close to China. It will take effect on Jan. 22, 2026.
The decision has raised concerns about global cooperation on any future outbreaks which the WHO helps coordinate through a series of international health regulations.
“There are things you can get only at the WHO and nowhere else. These issues are health security issues … and that’s why we were asking the U.S. to reconsider, because the world can only be secure if we are all in the same platform,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in response to a reporter’s question about the withdrawal.
“Their absence from WHO is going to be a lose-lose, they will lose because of that. The rest of the world will also lose.”
Tedros said U.S. criticisms of the organisation were unwarranted since it was addressing them including through cost-cutting reforms. On the accusation of the mismanagement of the pandemic, he said lessons had been learned.
He said he also agreed that Washington, for years the biggest donor to WHO, should pay less in order to correct an overdependence on a single donor.
Tedros said that despite early instructions from the Trump administration for U.S. health officials to refrain from contacting the WHO, they had regularly sought information which the WHO had granted.
“We have given them any information they need because at the end of the day, WHO’s existence is to make the American people safe and the rest of the world safe,” he said.
(Reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Miranda Murray and Alison Williams)
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