Washington: The administration of President Donald Trump said Friday that the United States was rejecting the changes agreed last year for the World Health Organization in his Pandemic response, saying that they violated the sovereignty of the country.
Trump when he returned to the position on January 20 immediately began the withdrawal of his nation from the UN agency, but the State Department said that last year’s language would still have been binding to the United States.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F Kennedy JR, who has been a critic of vaccines for a long time, said the changes “run the risk of unjustified interference with our national sovereign right to make a health policy.”
“We will put the Americans first in all our actions and we will not tolerate international policies that violate discourse, privacy or personal freedoms of Americans,” they said in a joint statement.
Rubio and Kennedy dissociated the United States from a series of amendments to international health regulations, which provide a legal framework to combat diseases, agreed last year at the World Health Assembly in Geneva.
“We regret the United States’s decision to reject amendments,” said Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a statement published in X.
He emphasized the amendments “are clear about the sovereignty of the Member States,” and added that the WHO cannot demand similar blockages or measures.
The changes included a “commitment to solidarity and equity” declared in which a new group would study the needs of developing countries in future emergencies.
Countries have until Saturday to present reservations on amendments. Conservative and skeptical activists of vaccines in Britain and Australia, who have leftist governments, have fought public campaigns against changes.
The amendments occurred when the assembly failed in a more ambitious objective to seal a new global agreement on pandemics.
Most of the world finally assured a treaty in May, but the United States did not participate as it was in the process of retiring from WHO.
The United States, then under President Joe Biden, participated in the negotiations from May to June 2024, but said he could not support consensus, since he demanded protections for the intellectual property rights of the United States on the development of the vaccine.
Rubio’s predecessor, Antony Blinken, had welcomed the amendments as progress.
In their rejection of amendments, Rubio and Kennedy said the changes “fail to adequately address WHO’s susceptibility to political and censorship, especially China, during the outbreaks.”
Who is Ghebreyesus said that the body is “impartial and works with all countries to improve people’s health”?
