(Why should we give a dime to the people WHO seem to cause most of the world health problems when that much cash would go a long way towards making medical care cheaper in our own damn country.)
Just days after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization due to concerns about China’s outsize role, a top leader at the global organization has begun fundraising on social media.
Maria Van Kerkhove, the infectious disease epidemiologist who served as the WHO’s technical lead on the COVID-19 pandemic, posted on X on Thursday morning asking for donations to the WHO Foundation.
It’s a meager fraction of the $706 million shortfall in contributions anticipated from the U.S. for the 2024-2025 two-year budget period — 18 percent of the organization’s revenue.
Trump’s executive order — signed just hours after his inauguration — initiates a year-long notification period specified in the joint resolution adopted by Congress in 1948 establishing U.S. membership in the WHO.
WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told staff Thursday that the organization would implement “cost reductions and efficiencies,” including a freeze on new hires “except in the most critical areas” and a stop to capital investments, according to news reports.
The executive order also recalls American WHO staff and contractors.
The U.S. is required to meet its financial obligations to the WHO for the fiscal year before withdrawal, according to international conventions. The Congressional Research Service found that it is unclear how the WHO can credibly enforce mandated payments, though under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, a nation must pay its remaining financial obligations before withdrawing from a treaty.
The new executive order states that U.S. withdrawal was motivated by “unfairly onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments” — namely China’s.
WHO receives assessed (mandatory) contributions from member states that are scaled by population and GDP, as well as voluntary contributions from both private organizations and member states. Currently, the U.S. and China pay comparable amounts in assessed contributions — China is due to pay $181 million in assessed contributions for the years 2024 and 2025, while the U.S. was set to pay $264 million. But in voluntary contributions, China hardly donates anything: It is expected to pay just $2.5 million in 2024 and 2025. Before the executive order, the U.S. was expected to make voluntary contributions totalling $442 million.
The WHO was expecting the U.S. to pay its 2024 assessed contribution this month totaling $130 million, but to date has not received it.
Read much more:
https://dailycaller.com/2025/01/24/who-online-fundraiser-us/
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