Who’s WHO — and Why You Should Care
As we near 3.5 million cases of the coronavirus and surpass 135,000 deaths, President Donald J. Trump has formally withdrawn the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO).
The withdrawal comes on the heels of the president freezing funding to the WHO in April 2020. The U.S. contributes upwards of $400 million annually to the WHO and is the group’s largest contributor (though even before the freeze the U.S. was close to $200 million in arrears to the organization). The claims Trump has made to justify the withdrawal — including that the WHO failed to share information in a timely and transparent manner, gave faulty information, and is too closely allied with China — are further explained (and at times countered) in this BBC article.
Lawmakers from both parties have criticized the move. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who chairs the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, said: “I disagree with the president’s decision. … Withdrawing U.S. membership could, among other things, interfere with clinical trials that are essential to the development of vaccines, which citizens of the United States as well as others in the world need. … And withdrawing could make it harder to work with other countries to stop viruses before they get to the United States.”
In addition, Thomas File, Jr., president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said, “Abandoning our seat at the table leaves the United States out of global decision-making to combat the virus and global efforts to develop and access vaccines and therapeutics, leaving us more vulnerable to COVID-19 while diminishing our position as the leader in global health.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) is the world’s leading public health organization. It seeks to understand and act on the social, environmental, and economic determinants of health. Because health and the economy are closely interrelated, the WHO collaborates closely with the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. The WHO also defines diseases with the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) system, which enables doctors to collaborate around the globe using a common vocabulary. The WHO provides nations with technical and advisory support. The WHO also works to build health systems that bring all needed health services to all individuals in all communities.
Here are some of the WHO’s core activities:
- Coordinates disaster and epidemic responses. Helps nations prepare for disasters and epidemics and build resilience to these challenges.
- Fights noncommunicable diseases like heart disease and cancer. Seeks to reduce the incidence of injury and violence and the consequences the victims subsequently suffer.
- Works to meet the needs of at-risk groups like pregnant women, children, the elderly, migrants, those who are incarcerated, the LGBTQ community, and racial minorities.
- Promotes the social, political, and economic determinants of health, like making sure everyone has clean air, clean water, safe housing, and literacy. Supports human rights and the ethical governance practices and institutions needed to provide every global citizen access to healthcare without interruption.
- Sets standards for medical education and encourages practices that help all nations develop the healthcare workforce their populations need. Encourages the development of strong public health and health care systems in each nation (including proper dental, visual, and mental health services).
- Promotes medical and scientific research.
- Sets international standards, called the International Health Regulations (last updated in 2005), on how nations are supposed to report potential outbreaks and respond to such reports. Promotes responses to outbreaks in ways that protect public health based on evidence, with as few limits on trade and travel as possible. (Nations aren’t supposed to enact policies that affect trade or travel in response to a report of a possible epidemic or pandemic unless advised by the WHO, since there’s no empirical evidence that closing borders helps slow the spread in most situations, and the consequences a potential outbreak can have on trade discourage early reporting. Closing borders also makes it hard for migrants, refugees, and displaced people to get care, and for health workers, medical supplies, vaccines, food, etc. to get to everyone when they need it.)
- Works with multilateral organizations to promote animal health practices and farming strategies essential to protecting and promoting human health (e.g., developing sustainable agriculture, preventing novel pathogens, preventing microbial resistance).
- Collaborates with other multilateral organizations, like the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the World Intellectual Property Organization to try to make sure everyone has access to essential medicines.
- Does what they can to make sure companies don’t engage in dangerous marketing practices to promote things like tobacco or unsafe infant formula (dangerous in areas without clean water).
- Published the tool used to check our ability to respond to a global flu pandemic last year, which prophetically showed most of the holes that have killed 135,000 (and growing) Americans during this pandemic.
Katie Brower Dressman is a content researcher for Mormon Women for Ethical Government
Lisa Rampton Halverson is the senior director of the educate limb for Mormon Women for Ethical Government
