כעת זה סופי: ארה"ב פרשה מארגון הבריאות העולמי

The U.S. officially leaves the World Health Organization. President Trump began the year-long withdrawal process on his first day back in office, criticizing the agency's handling of COVID and why he calls excessive influence from China. NTD's Jack Bradley reports. The U.S. has just officially exited from the World Health Organization. President Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office, starting the year-long process of withdrawing from the WHO. In the order, he restated his reasons for withdrawing the first time back in 2020, saying that the WHO mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic and had too much influence from its members like the Chinese Communist Party. Chinese officials ignored their reporting obligations to the World Health Organization and pressured the World Health Organization to mislead the world when the virus was first discovered by Chinese authorities. At the start of the pandemic, the WHO took China for its word when it said there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus, thereby allowing outbound flights from China to continue, while the CCP was locking down domestic travel at home. The entire time, China refused to allow outside investigators in. Trump also accused the WHO of helping China to mislead the world about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. But the agency denies these allegations. I always said it came from Wuhan. It did come from Wuhan. President Trump also says that the agency demands disproportionately big payments from the U.S. compared to much larger countries like China. We were paying $500 million a year, and China was paying $37 million a year. Former President Joe Biden, upon taking office in 2021, immediately reversed the move and rejoined the WHO. First thing Biden did is go back into it. You know what he paid? More than $500 million. I made a deal at $37 million. I could have had $37 million. They were public about it. We'll give you the same deal that China has for $37 million. The exit could violate U.S. law, though, which requires the U.S. to pay about $260 million in outstanding fees before leaving. But a State Department spokesperson defended the decision on Thursday, saying the president paused all future U.S. funding to the WHO and that Americans have already paid enough. The U.S. withdrawal from the WHO is forcing the agency to make major budget and workforce cuts, but the director general is seeing the bright side, saying it offers an opportunity. An opportunity for countries to transition away from aid dependency towards self-reliance. The WHO is just one of several United Nations-tied organizations that the U.S. has been withdrawing from over the past year. That includes the U.N. Human Rights Council, which allows notorious human rights abusers on it, like China and Cuba. Reporting from Washington, D.C., Jack Bradley, NTD News.