Global health is likely to be radically altered with Donald Trump in the White House. For starters, the president-elect has made no secret of his dislike for the World Health Organization (WHO), so a complete withdrawal from the WHO is now a real prospect.
Even if this can be avoided through negotiation, serious and deep changes will be demanded. In one sense, this is long overdue. The WHO’s failure to evolve with the times as well as its sclerotic structure have left it wide open to reform for some time.
But it’s not just the WHO that Trump objects to. He views most multi-country agreements with suspicion. For example, the pandemic treaty – which aims to redress the inadequacies of the global COVID response – he sees as disadvantaging the US.
