Trump pulls US from World Health pandemic reforms
Trump, who returned to office on January 20, immediately began the country's withdrawal from the UN health body. The State Department said language adopted in 2023 would still have been binding on the United States despite the pullout.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccines, said in a joint statement the changes 'risk unwarranted interference with our national sovereign right to make health policy.'
'We will put Americans first in all our actions and we will not tolerate international policies that infringe on Americans' speech, privacy or personal liberties,' they said.
Rubio and Kennedy formally disassociated the United States from a series of amendments to the International Health Regulations—legal instruments that guide global cooperation in combating disease—that were adopted at the 2023 World Health Assembly in Geneva.
'We regret the US decision to reject the amendments,' WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement posted on X. He stressed that the reforms 'are clear about member states' sovereignty' and said the WHO 'cannot mandate lockdowns or similar measures.'
The changes included a stated 'commitment to solidarity and equity,' and established a working group to assess the needs of developing countries in future emergencies.
Countries have until Saturday to formally lodge objections to the reforms. Conservative activists and vaccine skeptics in the United States, Britain and Australia have led public campaigns against the changes, even as those nations' governments supported them.
The amendments were passed after countries failed to agree on a more ambitious global pandemic treaty. Most member states finalized a version of that treaty in May 2025, though the United States did not participate as it was then in the process of leaving the WHO.
Under President Joe Biden, the United States took part in negotiations during May–June 2024 but declined to support a final consensus, citing concerns about protecting US intellectual property rights related to vaccine development.
Rubio's predecessor, Antony Blinken, had welcomed the WHO reforms as progress. But Rubio and Kennedy said the changes 'fail to adequately address the WHO's susceptibility to political influence and censorship—most notably from China—during outbreaks.'
The WHO's Ghebreyesus said the organization 'is impartial and works with all countries to improve people's health.'
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