WHO chief says reasons US gave for withdrawing ‘untrue’

GENEVA: The head of the UN’s health agency on Saturday pushed back against Washington’s stated reasons for withdrawing from the World Health Organization, dismissing US criticism of the WHO as “untrue”.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that US announcement this week that it had formally withdrawn from the WHO “makes both the US and the world less safe”.

And in a post on X, he added: “Unfortunately, the reasons cited for the US decision to withdraw from WHO are untrue.”

He insisted: “WHO has always engaged with the US, and all Member States, with full respect for their sovereignty.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a joint statement Thursday that Washington had formally withdrawn from the WHO.

They accused the agency, of numerous “failures during the Covid-19 pandemic” and of acting “repeatedly against the interests of the United States”.

The WHO has not yet confirmed that the US withdrawal has taken effect.

The two US officials said the WHO had “trashed and tarnished” the United States, and had compromised its independence.

“The reverse is true,” the WHO said in a statement.

“As we do with every Member State, WHO has always sought to engage with the United States in good faith.”

The agency strenuously rejected the accusation from Rubio and Kennedy that its Covid response had “obstructed the timely and accurate sharing of critical information that could have saved American lives and then concealed those failures”.

Kennedy also suggested in a video posted to X Friday that the WHO was responsible for “the Americans who died alone in nursing homes (and) the small businesses that were destroyed by reckless mandates” to wear masks and get vaccinated.

The US withdrawal, he insisted, was about “protecting American sovereignty, and putting US public health back in the hands of the American people”. APP