The World Health Organization endures an exceptional crisis following the United States departure from the agency which threatens fundamental worldwide healthcare efforts and disease management operations and polio elimination activities. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus met with diplomats in private sessions to argue that global leaders should push Washington to change its mind because essential health data access would be lost to the United States.
As its biggest financial contributor the U.S. supports WHO through a budget contribution of $988 million which makes up 14% of its $6.9 billion expenditures. An American withdrawal from WHO threatens to eliminate vital programs for European tuberculosis elimination and emergency responses across Ukraine and Sudan. Health readiness functions within European WHO programs would experience an 80% reduction due to funding cuts when the U.S. ends its support for the global health organization.
Finances Director George Kyriacou documented in internal WHO documents that the organization would become cash-strapped and exist on a mere hand-to-mouth basis by 2026 due to continued funding patterns. WHO faces an ongoing financial crisis because the U.S. has not completed payments for 2024 while the organization operates at a deficit. 
During an interview Tedros asserted that WHO did not mismanage COVID-19 and it implemented necessary reforms while continuing its vital role as a global health security organization. WHO Director Bjorn Kummel from Germany deemed the United States withdrawal “the largest institutional crisis” that WHO had experienced during the last few decades while asking about which programs might fail if the U.S. did not rejoin.
WHO struggles to close its funding deficit as experts predict this crisis event may transform global public health systems. The main priority at present requires that the U.S. should reverse its withdrawal from global health initiatives to maintain their protection.
