U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced today that the United States is formally withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO). Announcing the withdrawal from WHO, he cited deep concerns over political interference, bureaucratic inefficiency, and conflicts of interest.
Withdrawal From WHO
Speaking on behalf of the Trump administration, Kennedy said the move signals a broader shift in global health strategy.
“The WHO often acts like it has forgotten that its members must remain accountable to their own citizens and not to transnational or corporate interests,” Kennedy said in a recorded address.
He said the WHO had failed in its pandemic response, particularly during COVID-19, when it “suppressed reports at critical junctures of human-to-human transmission” under pressure from China, and helped promote “the fiction that COVID originated from bats or pangolins” rather than research at the Wuhan biolab.
Kennedy said the organization had not acknowledged those failures and had instead doubled down with the proposed Pandemic Agreement, which he claimed would “lock in all of the dysfunctions of the WHO pandemic response.”
“We’re not going to participate in that,” Kennedy said. “We need to reboot the whole system.”
U.S. Recalibrates Public Health Priorities
Kennedy said the United States remains committed to international health cooperation, but not under the current WHO model. He called for the creation or revitalization of “lean, efficient, transparent, and accountable” institutions to replace the WHO’s role.
Domestically, he outlined a shift in the nation’s health priorities, away from industry-driven models and toward tackling chronic disease. He said chronic illness was “sickening our people and bankrupting our health care system.”
Among the policy measures mentioned were:
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Removing harmful additives such as food dyes from the food supply
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Investigating causes of autism and other chronic illnesses
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Reducing consumption of ultra-processed foods
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Supporting lifestyle changes to strengthen immunity
“These changes can only occur through the kind of systemic overhaul that President Trump has brought to our country,” Kennedy said.
International Call to Action
Kennedy called on other countries to reconsider their alignment with the WHO and to join the U.S. in building a new framework for global health.
“We want to free international health cooperation from the straightjacket of political interference by corrupting influences of the pharmaceutical companies, of adversarial nations and their NGO proxies,” he said.
The Trump administration is already speaking with “like-minded countries,” Kennedy added, and he extended an open invitation to health ministers around the world.
“Let’s all pray for the health of our children and our grandchildren,” he said in closing.
The withdrawal from WHO announcement was produced and released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
