US President Donald Trump announced on Monday that his country is withdrawing from the World Health Organisation.
A staunch critic of WHO, Trump initiated a withdrawal from the United Nations health agency in July 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump’s successor, Joe Biden halted the withdrawal four years later in one of his first actions as president.
CNN reports that in his executive order on Monday, Trump cited WHO’s “mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states” as reasons for the withdrawal.
Addressing Trump’s decision in his second term as president, Dr Ashish Jha, who served as White House COVID-19 response coordinator during the Biden administration, called it a “strategic error”.
“WHO is a pretty essential organization — and with America’s withdrawal, it creates a political vacuum that only one country can fill — and that is China,” he told CNN.