Health
Argentina follows Trump’s lead and withdraws from the WHO
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Argentina has followed in the footsteps of Donald Trump by dramatically announcing that it will pull out of the World Health Organization.
The move echoes President Trump’s executive order unveiled last month, which declared America would no longer be part of the international health body.
Argentina’s announcement was made during a press conference on Wednesday afternoon by the country’s presidential spokesman, Manuel Adorni.
Mr Adorni said President Javier Milei’s decision was based on ‘deep differences regarding health management especially during the [Covid-19] pandemic’, adding Argentina would not ‘allow an international body to interfere in our sovereignty’.
He said the WHO’s pandemic management, along with decisions made by former President Alberto Fernández, ‘led [Argentina] to the longest lockdown in human history’ and to Buenos Aires being subject to ‘certain countries’ political influence’.
President Trump last move said he withdrew America from the WHO because he believes the US was being ripped off by the organization, describing the federal government’s overpayments over the years as ‘onerous’.
He compared the $500 million the US contributes to the WHO each year to the $39 million Chinapays, despite China’s 1.4 billion population being over four times that of the US.
Trump said withdrawing from the WHO, one of his first executive orders signed within hours of his inauguration on Monday, was due to a ‘failure to adopt urgently needed reforms.’
The President had previously has repeatedly called the health body a puppet of Beijing for failing to hold China accountable for the early spread of Covid-19.
Argentina is following the USA and cutting ties with the World Health Organization (file image)
Trump made withdrawing from the WHO one of the first moves in his return to the White House
America’s withdrawal from the WHO marked a dramatic shift in US global health policy and could further isolate Washington from international efforts to battle pandemics.
The departure also denies the healthy body of its biggest donor with the US providing the WHO with about 16 per cent of its funding in 2022-23.
The move came four years after Trump first attempted to withdraw from the health body during the Covid-19 pandemic, a move that was ultimately blocked by Joe Biden after the 2020 election.
Withdrawing from the WHO was one of a raft of executive orders signed by Trump in his first week, alongside placing all DEI employees in the federal government on leave, rescinding 78 Biden-era executive orders, and releasing classified documents related to the assassinations of JFK and MLK Jr.
Speaking at the time of the US President’s announcement, former White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha said Trump’s team wanted to move faster this time around than four years ago.
‘There are lots of people who are going to be part of the inner circle of the administration who do not trust the WHO and want to symbolically show on day one that they are out,’ he told the Financial Times.
This is a breaking news story, more to follow.