WHO chief asks countries to push Washington to reconsider its withdrawal

WHO chief urges global leaders to reverse Trump's decision to withdraw from WHO, warning of critical information loss.

The World Health Organization chief asked global leaders to lean on Washington to reverse President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the U.N. health agency, insisting in a closed-door meeting with diplomats last week that the U.S. will miss out on critical information about global disease outbreaks.

But countries also pressed WHO at a key budget meeting on last Wednesday about how it might cope with the exit of its biggest donor, according to internal meeting materials obtained by The Associated Press. A German envoy, Bjorn Kummel, warned: “The roof is on fire, and we need to stop the fire as soon as possible.”

For 2024-2025, the U.S. is WHO’s biggest donor by far, putting in an estimated $988 million, roughly 14% of WHO’s $6.9 billion budget.

A budget document presented at the meeting showed WHO’s health emergencies program has a “heavy reliance” on American cash. “Readiness functions” in WHO’s Europe office were more than 80% reliant on the $154 million the U.S. contributes.

The document said U.S. funding “provides the backbone of many of WHO's large-scale emergency operations,” covering up to 40%. It said responses in the Middle East, Ukraine and Sudan were at risk, in addition to hundreds of millions of dollars lost by polio-eradication and HIV programs.

The U.S. also covers 95% of WHO's tuberculosis work in Europe and more than 60% of TB efforts in Africa, the Western Pacific and at the agency headquarters in Geneva, the document said.

At a separate private meeting on the impact of the U.S. exit last Wednesday, WHO finance director George Kyriacou said if the agency spends at its current rate, the organization would “be very much in a hand-to-mouth type situation when it comes to our cash flows” in the first half of 2026. He added the current rate of spending is “something we're not going to do," according to a recording obtained by the AP.