by Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., Childrens Health Defense:
The U.S. House of Representatives last week voted to halt World Health Organization (WHO) funding for 2023-24, but critics call for exiting the WHO to stop the advisory U.N. agency’s stated plans to become “a governing body” with power “to override decisions made by sovereign nations regarding health measures.”
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The U.S. House of Representatives last week approved a bill that cuts U.S. funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
The House approved H.R. 4665, the Fiscal Year 2024 Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, including the provision that, “None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be made available for the World Health Organization.”
The bill’s passage comes as a sharp turnaround after the U.S. in 2022-23 was the WHO’s top contributor, surpassing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and over the past decade provided the WHO between $200 million to $600 million annually.
The bill, which passed by a 216-212 vote, is seen as a partial victory for critics of the WHO’s proposed pandemic treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR), which would give the global health agency the power to dictate policies during health emergencies.
H.R. 4665 stipulates that the U.S. Senate must first ratify any WHO proposal, including a pandemic treaty, before the U.S. Department of State can use taxpayer dollars to implement it.
The bill also states the Constitution’s Senate treaty ratification requirement applies to “any international convention, agreement, protocol, legal instrument, or agreed outcome with legal force drafted by the intergovernmental negotiating body of the World Health Assembly or any other United Nations body.”
The bill goes next to the Senate, where it was placed on its legislative calendar.
Dr. David Bell, a public health physician and biotech consultant in global health, praised the bill, telling The Defender, “As WHO is obviously advocating for policies that are contrary to basic principles of democracy, human rights and ethical public health at present, defunding such work is necessary to protect society.”
Bell — who formerly worked as a medical officer and scientist at the WHO — said there are important aspects of cooperation in international health that the U.S. needs to support, but there are “other avenues for this that do not undermine human dignity” instead of working through the WHO.
The WHO’s response to COVID-19 demonstrated that it is “compromised by vested interests that are seeking to profit by imposing human rights restrictions based on false assertions, using fear and coercion,” Bell said. “It is irrational to use taxpayers’ money to support such approaches.”
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