One year after giving notice, the United States has officially left the World Health Organization.
The United States was the WHO’s largest contributor. Its departure will significantly reshape global efforts to prevent disease, maybe for the better.
According to Cato Senior Fellow Jeffrey A. Singer, MD, this withdrawal might offer a chance to rethink global and domestic public health.
When the US government first announced its decision, Singer discussed the need for an organization to promote and defend global public health:
In today’s globally interconnected society, where people and goods move rapidly worldwide, a global public health agency is legitimate and necessary. Cooperating with such an agency to reduce the spread of deadly communicable and infectious diseases that can come to our shores is putting America first.
While the WHO might have been conceived with this idea in mind, its focus has long shifted away from public health:
Unfortunately, the WHO has expanded its mission over the years to areas that only tangentially relate to public health, such as issuing alcohol consumption and dietary guidelines. Such issues are more aptly defined as private health, i.e., matters that don’t cause harm to others.
Singer adds that this is the same strand of mission creep that has plagued American institutions for decades:
As I have written here, US public health agencies’ mission creep has extended to include recommendations to lawmakers on gun control, physicians on how to treat pain, parents and teens on safely consuming social media, and parents on how to reduce the stress of childrearing. This mission creep is politically divisive, redirects agency resources away from legitimate functions, and causes agencies to take on too many roles, often failing to execute any of them effectively.
The United States’ departure from the WHO is an opportunity for Americans and the whole world to move away from past mistakes, promote transparency and accountability, and refocus their efforts on genuine public health activities.