US Withdrawal from World Health Organization

Hi, I'm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., your HHS Secretary.

On Thursday, the United States formally withdrew from

the World Health

Organization. We made this decision to reclaim our

independence,

to protect American sovereignty, and to free our public health

policy from a system that no longer serves the

American people. The World Health Organization has lost its

way.

It's drifted far from its founding mission, and it's become mired

in bureaucracy and conflicts of interest

and in international power politics.

During the COVID pandemic, those failures weren't just abstract,

they were deadly. The world watched as transparency

collapsed,

accountability disappeared, and ordinary citizens paid the price.

That hasn't changed, and it isn't improving.

President Trump recognized the problems with WHO immediately.

In fact, one of his very first executive orders of

his second

term began the formal process of withdrawing the United

States from the World Health Organization.

It was an early decisive signal that American health policy would answer

to the American people and not to foreign bureaucracies.

Today, we're completing that action.

Protecting Americans here at home and abroad is our top priority, and

that's why my team at HHS, working closely

with the HHS career civil servants and scientists and the State

Department,

has strengthened our biosecurity, upgraded disease surveillance,

improved outbreak preparedness, and expanded the rapid

response capabilities for any public health emergency

wherever it begins. We don't need outside institutions to

do that. Going forward, US engagement with the

WHO will be limited solely to completing our withdrawal and safeguarding

the health and safety of the American people.

All US funding has ended. All government US personnel

have stopped working there. I believe this deeply, that only the

United States has the scale, the innovation, and the

leadership to drive global health solutions that put people

first, starting with our own citizens.

Although we are withdrawing from the WHO, America will never

withdraw from its leadership in global health.

America will continue to lead. We will lead with science, with

integrity, and with transparency, and with accountability.

And let me say this clearly. For the Americans who died alone in

nursing

homes, the small businesses that were destroyed by reckless

mandates,

the families whose lives were upended by unelected foreign

officials who never answered to them, this decision is for you.

Thank you.

Produced by the US Department of Health and Human Services.