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They’re out.
Today, the United States officially left the World Health Organization, completing the one year withdrawal process.
This raises a big question: what happens next?
Some will argue that this is the end of the story. However, a future Democrat President, whenever that comes, is almost certain to rejoin. Unless something changes, it won’t be the WHO of today that they return to, but something much worse.
That is why this moment matters.
The WHO must either undergo radical reform and become an organization that sovereign nations can participate in with confidence, or it must be replaced altogether by something that respects national and individual liberty.
That is where Action on World Health comes in. With our panel of experts, we are working to set out what meaningful reform would actually look like, or what a credible replacement could be if that proves impossible.
At a Together panel last year, which I took part in alongside Dr Jay Bhattacharya, Director of the National Institutes of Health, he openly supported the case for replacement. That idea is no longer fringe, and there is real momentum in Washington to rethink how international health cooperation should work.
The United States leaving the WHO is not the end. It is the beginning of a much bigger debate about the future.