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by JumpCrisscross 519 days ago
"The U.S. has historically been one of the largest funders of WHO." [1]. Withdrawing diminishes the WHO China controls.

(Looking at the WHO's largest voluntary contributors [2], I could see the UK, Australia and France withdrawing soon, too.)

[1] https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/fact-sheet/the-u-s-...

[2] https://www.who.int/about/funding
2 comments
wumeow 519 days ago
> Withdrawing diminishes the WHO China controls.

Unless they decide to step up their funding as a soft power play.

This is a better page for viewing the WHO's sources of funding, at least for 2022-23[0][1]. There are three separate categories of voluntary funding and only 6.6% of funds come from Core Voluntary Contributions as displayed in your graph.

[0] https://open.who.int/2022-23/contributors/contributor

[1] https://open.who.int/2022-23/contributors/top25

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ChocolateGod 519 days ago
The UK won't withdraw from the WHO whilst Labour are in government.

Starmer is many things wrong but one thing he won't do is renegade on international treaties and agreements.

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JumpCrisscross 519 days ago
> UK won't withdraw from the WHO whilst Labour are in government

You're right, I brainfarted and mixed up the coming political shifts in Canada and the UK.

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n4r9 519 days ago
I'm from the UK and don't anticipate any political impetus for leaving the WHO even if the Tories return to power. I feel like the UK discourse did not blame the WHO for COVID scandals as much as the US's did. Googling around I did find this petition during Sunak's term, but it ranked low in terms of signatures for petitions during that Parliament: https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/648609 .
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ChocolateGod 517 days ago
I still think for the most part the WHO's actions during COVID were all made in good faith, even if mistakes were made.

The WHO being outside politics is good, it means it can focus on health/science and not worry about appealing to electorates.

I think Trump has a point though regarding China's contributions, China isn't a poor country but the WHO doesn't really have any way of forcing it to pay more.

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