GENEVA: The World Health Organization chief asked global leaders to lean on Washington to reverse President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the UN health agency, insisting in a closed-door meeting with diplomats last week that the US will miss out on critical information about global disease outbreaks.
But countries also pressed WHO at a key budget meeting last Wednesday about how it might cope with the exit of its biggest donor, according to internal meeting materials obtained by The Associated Press. A German envoy, Bjorn Kummel, warned: “The roof is on fire, and we need to stop the fire as soon as possible.”
For 2024-2025, the US is WHO’s biggest donor by far, putting in an estimated $988 million, roughly 14 percent of WHO’s $6.9 billion budget.
A budget document presented at the meeting showed WHO’s health emergencies program has a “heavy reliance” on American cash. “Readiness functions” in WHO’s Europe office were more than 80 percent reliant on the $154 million the US contributes.
The document said US funding “provides the backbone of many of WHO’s large-scale emergency operations,” covering up to 40 percent. It said responses in the Middle East, Ukraine and Sudan were at risk, in addition to hundreds of millions of dollars lost by polio-eradication and HIV programs.
The US also covers 95 percent of WHO’s tuberculosis work in Europe and more than 60 percent of TB efforts in Africa, the Western Pacific and at the agency headquarters in Geneva, the document said.
At a separate private meeting on the impact of the US exit last Wednesday, WHO finance director George Kyriacou said if the agency spends at its current rate, the organization would “be very much in a hand-to-mouth type situation when it comes to our cash flows” in the first half of 2026. He added the current rate of spending is “something we’re not going to do,” according to a recording obtained by the AP.
Since Trump’s executive order, WHO has attempted to withdraw funds from the US for past expenses, Kyriacou said, but most of those “have not been accepted.”
The US also has yet to settle its owed contributions to WHO for 2024, pushing the agency into a deficit, he added.
WHO’s leader wants to bring back the US
Last week, officials at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were instructed to stop working with WHO immediately.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the attendees at the budget meeting that the agency is still providing US scientists with some data — though it isn’t known what data.
“We continue to give them information because they need it,” Tedros said, urging member countries to contact US officials. “We would appreciate it if you continue to push and reach out to them to reconsider.”
Among other health crises, WHO is currently working to stop outbreaks of Marburg virus in Tanzania, Ebola in Uganda and mpox in Congo.
Tedros rebutted Trump’s three stated reasons for leaving the agency in the executive order signed on Jan. 20 — Trump’s first day back in office. In the order, the president said WHO mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic that began in China, failed to adopt needed reforms and that US membership required “unfairly onerous payments.”
Tedros said WHO alerted the world in January 2020 about the potential dangers of the coronavirus and has made dozens of reforms since — including efforts to expand its donor base.
Tedros also said he believed the US departure was “not about the money” but more about the “void” in outbreak details and other critical health information that the United States would face in the future.
“Bringing the US back will be very important,” he told meeting attendees. “And on that, I think all of you can play a role.”
Kummel, a senior adviser on global health in Germany’s health ministry, described the US exit as “the most extensive crisis WHO has been facing in the past decades.”
He also asked: “What concrete functions of WHO will collapse if the funding of the US is not existent anymore?”
Officials from countries including Bangladesh and France asked what specific plans WHO had to deal with the loss of US funding and wondered which health programs would be cut as a result.
The AP obtained a document shared among some WHO senior managers that laid out several options, including a proposal that each major department or office might be slashed in half by the end of the year.
WHO declined to comment on whether Tedros had privately asked countries to lobby on the agency’s behalf.
Experts say US benefits from WHO
Some experts said that while the departure of the US was a major crisis, it might also serve as an opportunity to reshape global public health.
Less than one percent of the US health budget goes to WHO, said Matthew Kavanagh, director of Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Policy and Politics. In exchange, the US gets “a wide variety of benefits to Americans that matter quite a bit,” he said. That includes intelligence about disease epidemics globally and virus samples for vaccines.
Kavanagh also said the WHO is “massively underfunded,” describing the contributions from rich countries as “peanuts.”
WHO emergencies chief Dr. Michael Ryan said at the meeting on the impact of the US withdrawal last week that losing the US was “terrible,” but member states had “tremendous capacity to fill in those gaps.”
Ryan told WHO member countries: “The US is leaving a community of nations. It’s essentially breaking up with you.”
Kavanagh doubted the US would be able to match WHO’s ability to gather details about emerging health threats globally, and said its exit from the agency “will absolutely lead to worse health outcomes for Americans.”
“How much worse remains to be seen,” Kavanagh said.
WHO chief asks countries to push Washington to reconsider its withdrawal
https://arab.news/mh9uw
WHO chief asks countries to push Washington to reconsider its withdrawal
- A budget document presented at the meeting showed WHO’s health emergencies program has a ‘heavy reliance’ on American cash
- The document said US funding ‘provides the backbone of many of WHO’s large-scale emergency operations,’ covering up to 40%
What Bangladesh’s election means for India, China and Pakistan ties
- Bangladeshis will vote on Feb. 12, almost two years after the 2024 student-led uprising
- After nearly 2 years of tensions, experts expect a thaw with India under elected government
DHAKA: As Bangladesh prepares to hold its first elections since the 2024 ouster of Sheikh Hasina, its longest-serving prime minister, the outcome will define Dhaka’s relations with the most important regional powers — China, India, and Pakistan.
Nearly 128 million Bangladeshis will head to the polls on Feb. 12 to bring in new leadership after an 18-month rule of the current caretaker administration.
The interim government, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, took control following a student-led uprising that ended 15 years in power of Hasina and her Awami League party.
The two main parties out of the 51 competing for power are the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami. The Awami League, which for decades has had close ties with India, was excluded from the election ballot over its role in the deadly crackdown on the 2024 student-led protests, in which 1,400 people were killed.
While Bangladesh’s relationship India has deteriorated since the fall of Hasina, who has been in self-exile in New Delhi, the period of diplomatic strain is expected to ease when the new government takes office.
“Whoever comes to power in Bangladesh, due to domestic pressure in the country, relationships with India need a resetting,” Humayun Kabir, former ambassador to the US, told Arab News.
“It’s anticipated that India will also engage with the new government, but they will protect their interests, and we also have to do the same. It’s most likely that the India-Bangladesh relationship will be normalized under the new, elected, government.”
Since 2024, India has suspended key transshipment access that allowed Bangladeshi exports to go via Indian ports and airports. It also put on hold most normal visa services for Bangladeshis, who were among its largest groups of medical tourists.
From Hasina’s heavy pro-India orientation, the interim government has tried to rebalance Bangladesh’s foreign policy toward the two other key regional players — China and Pakistan — who at the same time are India’s main rivals.
If New Delhi regains its importance, it should not deal a blow to the newly expanded relations with Pakistan, with whom Bangladesh has recently increased exchanges, especially economic, and last month resumed direct flights — after a 14-year gap.
Since the relations have been expanded under the caretaker government, Prof. Delwar Hossain from the International Relations Department at Dhaka University forecast that they would only further improve, no matter who comes to power, and there is no likelihood of a sudden change.
“For Pakistan, any political coalition — whether BNP or Jamaat — will be positive. The BNP has a long history of having good relations with Pakistan during their rule ... Jamaat also has a strong and very positive influence in Pakistan,” he said.
“For Pakistan, the new regime or new government is not the issue. The issue is what the (India) policy of the new government would be and to what extent it would actually support Pakistan’s view.”
Both the BNP and Jamaat have repeatedly said they wanted friendly relations with India, and Hossain expected that they would, at the same time, continue the balanced approach introduced by the caretaker administration.
“India is a reality as a neighbor. At the same time, India is also showing interest in mending relations or adopting a more cooperative approach after the vote, with the government that will be elected ... I think there will be pragmatism from both sides,” he said.
“I don’t see there is a long-term threat to Bangladesh-India relations ... When China and Pakistan were trying to create a trilateral cooperative system or some kind of coalition — China, Bangladesh and Pakistan — we have seen that Bangladesh opted out. It seems that Bangladesh is going to continue its policy of maintaining a balance among these great powers.”
Bangladesh’s relations with China have not changed since the ouster of Hasina, whose government signed several economic agreements with Beijing. Yunus’s administration has continued this cooperation, and China was among the very few countries he officially visited during his term.
During the visit, he secured about $2.1 billion in Chinese investments, loans and grants, including funding for infrastructure like Mongla Port and a special economic zone in Chattogram — Bangladesh’s largest port. China has also eased visa rules for Bangladeshi businesspeople, medical travelers and tourists.
According to Munshi Faiz Ahmed, Bangladesh’s former ambassador to Beijing, China’s importance for Bangladesh cannot be substituted by any other country, especially as over the past few years it has emerged not only as its key investor, but also the largest trade partner.
In the fiscal year 2024-25, Bangladesh’s trade with China was over $21.3 billion, according to National Board of Revenue data. With India, it was about $11.5 billion.
The trade — especially import — dependence on Beijing started long before the regime change. In terms of trade volume, China overtook India already in 2018.
“Even when people thought that we had very close relations with India, our relations with China continued to grow in terms of trade and commerce ... Our trade with China has surpassed India’s, and China is a much bigger investor in Bangladesh’s development projects,” Ahmed said.
“Bangladesh will continue to cooperate with China for a long time to come because what China can provide, no other country can.”
