There has been a growing debate over our country’s involvement in the World Health Organization, or the WHO, and whether or not the United States should exit since the organization’s catastrophic handling of the Covid-19 Pandemic. The United States formally withdrew from the WHO on January 22, 2026. The exit was triggered by President Donald Trump through an executive order on January 20, 2025. The decision reverses President Biden’s decision to stay in the organization after Trump attempted to exit towards the end of his first term in 2020.

I believe that the United States, under Trump’s leadership, made the correct decision to exit, as the decision is not a move towards isolationism but a reaction to the World Health Organization’s repeated failure in accountability and no longer serving American interests.

The WHO is a specialized United Nations agency that focuses on global public health. The organization is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and was founded in 1948 with the US being one of the founding member states. The original intent behind its creation was to coordinate global disease response and make transparent and science-based recommendations and guidance.

The WHO began to face criticism over Covid-19 because of its slow, delayed warnings and its deference to China without verifying the information it provided. In addition, they provided inconsistent information on transmission, travel, and mask-wearing. These were the main reasons that Trump initially tried to withdraw in 2020.

The WHO simply does not have enough oversight or accountability. The US was the biggest funder of the organization, but as seen with pretty much every global organization, the large amount of US funding does not lead to organizations taking meaningful and helpful actions. Member states can withhold data without any consequences at all.

This was clearly seen by the Chinese as the WHO was informed by Chinese authorities that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the virus. This claim was later contradicted by the fact that China already had evidence of human-to-human transmission at the time they informed the WHO. With the wrong facts, an organization aimed at coordinating global disease response cannot function effectively, and this was exposed by the pandemic.

The WHO has no way to force a country to submit accurate information, and can be limited in how it can independently verify information for itself. Even if the WHO was given some sort of real controlling power over countries to gain information, I would argue it sets a dangerous precedent for global governing bodies and could easily lead to the threatening of a nation’s sovereignty.

Without real governing control, the WHO is hardly functional and cannot accomplish its goal related to global disease response, and even if the organization had the power to force countries to comply, it would be wrong for any sovereign nation to have an outside organization controlling them in that way.

As I mentioned before, the US is the largest funder of the WHO and paid the organization almost 1.3 billion dollars during the 2022-2023 biennium. The cost-benefit of being a member state is no longer worth it for Americans. This money would be much better used domestically towards the US’s own citizens than be thrown at the WHO to misinform us anyway.

While I know that our government is not at all efficient with its spending, the money would go towards American interests and our own domestic health. It would also be more efficient for our country to partner specifically with another nation that is our ally to coordinate disease response than to rely on the WHO and other nations that are our opposition.

Specific partnerships with other countries would be more reliable and have no reliance on authoritative governments.  The WHO relies heavily on self-reporting by member states, including authoritarian governments. This comes with the high risk of political pressure and how a country looks globally to shape the public health guidance the WHO puts out for the world to follow. Public health institutions should solely be focused on what is truly good for the health of humans.

Unfortunately, the WHO is corrupted by politics, and as a result, this political deference resulted in the erosion of trust by the US Government. If we can not trust the information that the WHO provides the world, then there is absolutely no reason to spend billions of dollars supporting it.

Some people say that leaving the WHO is restarting isolationism, but it is not. Isolationism is withdrawal from all cooperation, alliances, or engagement. The US is neither avoiding alliances nor refusing to cooperate on global issues. We are already engaged globally through channels beyond the WHO in areas relating to public health.

We have bilateral health agreements with some of our closer allies, partnerships through the CDC, and we support and cooperate with many NGOs and research institutions. These methods are more reliable, accurate, faster, and align directly with US interests. The exit from the WHO is strategic, not blanket disengagement and a return to isolationist policies. Nor does the US lose global influence by its exit.

Obviously, the US will lose its seats and voting power in the WHO, but this does not equate to a loss of global influence in the sphere of global health. As a nation, we can influence the world by showing what effective public health policies look like and the outcomes they create, not by having a presence in an organization.

In fact, our presence in the WHO could not prevent failures of transparency or compel accurate reporting of the facts needed to make decisions. If influence does not translate to reform or create accountability, then it is just symbolic. Symbolic influence does not help anyone, and it is definitely not worth financial support. Other nations will follow competency, not bureaucracy, when it really matters.

Overall, I believe that the correct decision was made regarding the exit from the World Health Organization, but only time will tell how the rest of the world will react. Withdrawal could lead to true reform, especially with the absence of the US’s funding, or we could serve as an example for other countries follow us and inspire alternative forms of global cooperation around public health. In the end, global public health requires cooperation, but cooperation without accountability and transparency is useless.