Opinion: The U.S. should reform the WHO, not leave it

The likely next secretary of state, Sen. Marco Rubio, once said of the World Health Organization: “The WHO is a corrupt, radical institution that was powerless to stop Covid-19 spreading beyond China.” That was in 2022. In 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, then-President Trump pulled U.S. funding and membership from the WHO, also slinging accusations of pandemic mismanagement. Now, it’s likely he’ll again pull the U.S. from the WHO early in his new administration.

Such a move would be a mistake. To be sure, Rubio is right in his review of how the WHO mismanaged the emergence and spread of Covid from China. But pulling out of the WHO is the wrong answer to the right question: How do we make the WHO an effective organization serving the public health needs of people around the world? Because that’s not what it is today.

Read the rest…