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
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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%
Polio outbreak declared in Papua New Guinea
SYDNEY: A polio outbreak has been declared in Papua New Guinea, sparking concern about the disease's spread in a country with low vaccination rates, health officials said.
Poliovirus, most often spread through sewage and contaminated water, is highly infectious and potentially fatal.
It can cause deformities and paralysis and mainly affects children under five years old.
The virus was detected in wastewater and environmental samples in the Pacific nation's capital Port Moresby and second largest city Lae, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
In subsequent testing, two children in Lae were found to have the poliovirus type 2 strain, according to the WHO representative in Papua New Guinea, Sevil Huseynova.
The confirmation of community transmission in the children "constitutes a polio outbreak", Huseynova said in briefing notes provided to AFP on Friday.
The health agency "expresses deep concern over the confirmed outbreak", she said.
Genetic testing showed the polio strain detected in Papua New Guinea was linked to one circulating in Indonesia.
Papua New Guinea was certified as polio-free in 2000, but immunisation rates among children are low -- less than 50 percent, according to the WHO.
"Polio is a highly infectious disease, and in communities with low polio immunisation rates, the virus quickly spreads from one person to another," Huseynova said.
Papua New Guinea Health Minister Elias Kapavore said the situation was "serious but manageable".
"We've dealt with this before and know what works," he told reporters on Thursday.
"Vaccination is safe and effective, and we're acting quickly to keep children protected."
Thai monk arrested over $9 million temple embezzlement
- Temples in Buddhist-majority Thailand rely heavily on income from “merit-making” ceremonies where worshippers make donations in hopes of gaining good fortune and better reincarnation
- The arrest from one of the Bangkok suburb’s most prominent temples has triggered significant backlash on social media
BANGKOK: Thai police have arrested a Buddhist monk over allegations he embezzled more than $9 million from the prominent temple he ran which was funded by donations from devotees.
Investigators from the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) accuse Abbot Phra Thammachiranuwat from Wat Rai Khing of siphoning more than 300 million baht ($9.05 million) from the temple’s bank account into his own.
Investigators traced funds from the temple on Bangkok’s western outskirts to an illegal online gambling network running baccarat card games, local media said.
Temples in Buddhist-majority Thailand rely heavily on income from “merit-making” ceremonies where worshippers make donations in hopes of gaining good fortune and better reincarnation.
Police charged Phra Thammachiranuwat with corruption and malfeasance, CIB deputy commissioner Jaroonkiat Pankaew told reporters at a press conference on Thursday.
“This (arrest) is to help purify our religion,” Jaroonkiat said.
Authorities have arrested a second suspect and are investigating whether others were involved, while local media reported the abbot has now left the monkhood.
Wat Rai Khing, believed to have been founded in 1851, houses a replica of the Buddha’s footprint.
The arrest from one of the Bangkok suburb’s most prominent temples has triggered significant backlash on social media.
“Next time I will donate to a hospital or school for good causes, not a temple,” one user posted on social media platform X.
Others cautioned their fellow Buddhists to remain firm in their faith.
“Not all monks are bad. Don’t generalize,” another X user wrote.
France sues Iran at top UN court over detained citizens
- The announcement comes as Iranian negotiators are set to meet with their counterparts from the United Kingdom, France, and Germany
PARIS: Paris has filed a case against Tehran at the top UN court over two French citizens who have been held in Iran for three years, the French foreign minister said on Friday.
The announcement comes as Iranian negotiators are set to meet with their counterparts from the United Kingdom, France, and Germany in Turkiye on Friday for talks on Iran’s nuclear program.
Cecile Kohler, a 40-year-old literature teacher from eastern France and her partner Jacques Paris, in his 70s, were arrested on May 7, 2022, on the last day of a tourist trip to Iran.
They have been held on spying charges, which they have vehemently denied.
In its case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), France accuses Iran “of violating its obligation to provide consular protection” to the pair, who “have been held hostage... detained in appaling conditions that amount to torture,” Jean-Noel Barrot told France 2 television.
They are among a number of Europeans still held by Iran in what some European countries, including France, regard as a deliberate strategy of hostage-taking to extract concessions from the West at a time of tension over the Islamic republic’s nuclear program.
Kohler and Paris are the last known French detainees in Iran after some recent releases and are regarded as “state hostages” by the French government.
The two are jailed in extremely tough conditions, according to their families.
Jihadists in Nigeria turn to TikTok to spread propaganda
LAGOS: Jihadists in northeastern Nigeria are surging -- and using social media to spread the word of their campaigns and recruit fighters.
At least 100 people were killed in the new wave of jihadist attacks in April alone, as the governor of Borno, the epicentre of the violence which has raged since 2009, said the state is losing ground to armed groups.
At the same time, apparent jihadists and their boosters on TikTok were flaunting rifles, grenades and stacks of cash, according to easily accessible videos reviewed by AFP that same month.
They broadcast live in joint videos with accounts run by men preaching anti-Western ideologies in a style reminiscent of the videos released by deceased Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau in the early days of the 15-year-old insurgency.
Criminal gangs that carry out raids on villages and kidnap for ransom in the northwest of the country have used TikTok in the past.
"It started with bandits," Bulama Bukarti, a vice president at Texas-based Bridgeway Foundation wrote on X. "Now, Boko Haram members are hosting live TikTok shows -- spreading propaganda, justifying their violence and threatening anyone who dares speak against them."
A Boko Haram fighter threatened Bukarti himself in a now-deleted TikTok video for speaking against the group, he said.
While many of the accounts on the video sharing app have been flagged and taken down, the capability of broadcasting live streams on the platform adds another layer of difficulty to monitoring the content they put out.
A TikTok spokesperson said it was difficult to quantify the number of accounts linked to terrorist organisations that have been taken down.
While some of these accounts have been deleted, several others remain active, according to accounts viewed by AFP at the time of publication.
"Terrorist groups and content related to these groups have no place on TikTok, and we take an uncompromising stance against enabling violent extremism on or off our platform," a spokesperson for the company told AFP in an emailed statement.
Among the 19 accounts reviewed by AFP were men dressed as clerics, their faces revealed to the camera even as they called for violence against the government and teamed up with accounts that showed off weapons hauls.
Accounts also post old footage of the original Boko Haram founder, Mohammed Yusuf, and those of Isah Garo Assalafy, who was banned from preaching in public places in Niger state for using violent rhetoric against democracy and Western civilisation.
These accounts frequently go live, interacting with followers, answering questions and receiving digital gifts that can be converted into cash.
Nigeria's jihadist conflict, which over the years has expanded to include a rival Islamic State group, has killed more than 40,000 and displaced some two million people in Africa's most populous country.
Saddiku Muhammad, a former jihadist who has since defected, told AFP that armed groups are turning to TikTok in part because security forces cracked down on the encrypted messaging app Telegram.
They also know TikTok is popular with young people.
"Jihadists realised that to capture the minds of young people, they need to speak to them in the language they understand -- instead of the traditional didactic and demagogic styles that are boring and unattractive to them," Muhammad said.
"From all indications, it is paying off. They are reaching out to young potential recruits."
Analysts told AFP that the use of TikTok by members of armed groups is a direct challenge to the government.
Malik Samuel, a security analyst at Abuja-based think tank Good Governance Africa, said it is a common Boko Haram tactic to use the group's young members to spread propaganda.
"I believe showing their faces is strategic -- to show that they aren't afraid and to let their target know that they are engaging with real people," Samuel said.
Islamic State West Africa Province, however, still appears to follow a more polished, top-down communication strategy than the apparent Boko Haram jihadists posting on TikTok, he said.
TikTok said it has partnered with UN-backed Tech Against Terrorism to improve the detection and removal of violent extremist content.
"Our community guidelines clearly state that we do not allow the presence of violent and hateful organisations or individuals on our platform," it said.
"We will always take action on content found to violate these policies."
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Israeli strikes kill at least 20 people in Gaza as Trump wraps up his Middle East visit
GAZA: Israeli strikes killed at least 20 people in Gaza on Friday morning, as U.S. President Donald Trump wraps up his Middle East visit.
An Associated Press journalist counted the bodies at the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, where they were brought. Survivors said many people were still under the rubble.
The widespread attacks across northern Gaza come as Trump finishes his visit to Gulf states but not Israel.
There had been widespread hope that Trump’s regional visit could usher in a ceasefire deal or renewal of humanitarian aid to Gaza. An Israeli blockade of the territory is now in its third month.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the strikes.
