What is WHO without the U.S.? Health officials wrestle with future at annual meeting

GENEVA — The U.S. has been accused of acting as an 800-pound gorilla on the global stage. Its absence this week from the World Health Organization’s annual meeting of its members cast it as an equally sized specter. 

WHO officials and delegates from different countries and aid groups spoke repeatedly of the disruption and crisis in international funding. They were upfront about the ensuing obstacles, detailing program cuts, job losses, and the resulting increase in illnesses and deaths that is all but guaranteed to come. But they largely skated past the major cause of those issues — the U.S. pulling its long-standing funding from the WHO and other global health initiatives.

“Many ministers have told me that sudden and steep cuts to bilateral aid are causing severe disruption in their countries, and imperiling the health of millions of people,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the WHO, said Monday at the opening of this year’s World Health Assembly. “In at least 70 countries, patients are missing out on treatments, health facilities have closed, health workers have lost their jobs, and people face increased out-of-pocket health spending.”