GENEVA (Reuters) – The World Health Organization launched its annual appeal for funding to respond to health emergencies on Thursday, just days before the inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States – the agency’s largest donor. – put a question mark on your long-term finances.
The WHO is seeking $1.5 billion to help more than 300 million people living in 42 emergency zones, from Gaza to Afghanistan.
“Without adequate and sustainable funding we face the impossible task of deciding who will receive care and who will not,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, deploring the growing gap between needs and available funding.
The United States has historically been a major contributor to both the WHO’s emergency appeal and its broader budget, set at $6.8 billion for 2024-2025. During the current two-year period, the United States provided about 34% of available funds for health emergencies, and in the past its contribution reached 50%, WHO data showed. It also provides about a fifth of WHO’s total funding.
But that funding could be at risk when Trump takes office for his second term next week. In his first term in the White House, he moved to cut funding to the WHO and withdraw the United States from the agency after criticizing it for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and its closeness to China.
Sources close to the transition team have indicated that he could take similar steps again in his second term.
When asked by Reuters late last month whether the United States would leave the WHO, a source familiar with talks in the transition team said: “The same WHO we left in the first administration? It seems like we wouldn’t do that much.” “I care what they have to say.”
Documents posted online by the WHO this week ahead of its executive board meeting in early February warned of the risks of losing any of its major donors.
The agency is partly funded by mandatory fees from member states, along with voluntary contributions and an investment round. Just five donors, again led by the United States, account for a large portion of its voluntary funding, according to the WHO document: up to two-thirds of the budget for some programs.