In a surprise appearance Tuesday before WHO member states via pre-recorded video, new US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr extended a kind of olive branch to the World Health Organization, calling for “a new era of international health cooperation, free from political influence and corporate bias.”

While Kennedy did not say that the US would rejoin the organization after announcing it would withdraw in January, he seemed to hold that out as a possibility, if WHO were to reform. But he also suggested that the US might lead the creation of “new institutions” should that effort fail.  

And he lashed out at the just-approved WHO pandemic agreement, something most member states view as a huge achievement, calling it an accord that would “lock in all of the dysfunctions of the WHO [COVID] pandemic response” – without explaining why or how. 

“We want to free international health cooperation from the straitjacket of political interference by corrupting influences of the pharmaceutical companies from adversarial nations and their NGO proxies,” Kennedy told Tuesday’s World Health Assembly, adding: 

“I would like to take this opportunity to invite my fellow health ministers around the world into a new era of cooperation. 

“Let’s create new institutions or revisit existing institutions that are lean, efficient, transparent and accountable, whether it’s an emergency outbreak of an infectious disease or the pervasive rot of chronic conditions that have been overtaking not just America but the whole world, we’re ready to work with you.”

Like many legacy institutions, WHO “has become mired in bureaucratic bloat, entrenched paradigms, conflicts of interest and international power politics, while the United States has provided the lion’s share of the organization’s funding,” Kennedy charged, while paying homage to most WHO staff as “conscientious people who believe in what they are doing.”

Revives charges against China over COVID pandemic 

Kennedy also slammed China, saying that the country had “exerted undue influence over its [WHO] operations in ways that serve their own interests and not particularly the interests of the global public.

“This all became obvious during the COVID pandemic, when the WHO under pressure from China, suppressed reports at critical junctures, of human-to-human transmission, and then worked with China to promote the fiction that COVID originated from bats or penguins, rather than from a Chinese government sponsored research at a biolab in Wuhan.”

“Not only has the WHO capitulated to political pressure from China. It’s also failed to maintain an organization characterized by transparency and fair governance by and for its member states. The WHO often acts like it has forgotten that its members must remain accountable to their own citizens and not to transnational or corporate interests,” Kennedy said.

The US Health Secretary’s remarks brought a sharp cry of protest from China, who called for a point of order just after the remarks.

“Cease smearing and shifting blame onto other countries,” said China’s delegate, charging that the US, as well, failed to “proactively share data on its early suspected [COVID] cases” with the World Health Organization.

Unsettled questions over COVID-19 virus origins and WHO response in early days

While the US sits out this year’s WHA, China has sent its largest delegation ever of more than 180 people. Beijing is also increasing its funding to WHO by $100 million a year, over the next five years, Vice-Premier Liu Guozhong said at Tuesday morning’s plenary.

That represents a huge new commitment from Beijing – although it was not immediately clear if the $100 million-a-year pledge includes the $50 million annual increase in assessed contributions that would be levied on Beijing in 2026-27 as part of a step-wise increase in member state fees, that is up for approval at this WHA.

As for the origins of the virus that sparked the COVID-19 pandemic, the question of whether the highly transmissible form of the virus, SARS CoV2, escaped in a lap leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology‘s which was studying the virus in bats, or spread from an infected animal through the teeming live animal market in the same city has been hotly debated by scientists the world over, but never definitely decided.

There’s no question, however, that the outcomes of the initial WHO fact-finding mission to Wuhan in 2021, were hotly criticized as orchestrated by Beijing. Following that,  China prevented a second WHO mission from returning again to conduct more detailed follow-up surveys and field research that could have helped answer the question more definitively.

Independent of China, WHO was also later criticized by other member states as well as independent experts for failing to call out earlier in 2020 patterns of person-to-person virus transmission, or a few months later, to confirm that SARS-CoV2 was airborne and recommend masks as a public health measure.

Calls WHO treaty an extension of COVID-era mistakes

Kennedy also slammed the just-approved WHO pandemic agreement, which was hailed as a crowning achievement of the global health agency and multilateralism by dozens of member states in remarks yesterday and earlier today. See related story:

Country After Country Endorse Pandemic Agreement in Enormous Show of Support

“Global cooperation on health is still critically important to President Trump and myself, but it isn’t working very well under the WHO, as the failures of the COVID era demonstrate,” Kennedy said, adding that, “the “WHO has not even come to terms with its failures during COVID, let alone made significant reforms.

“Instead, it has doubled down with the pandemic agreement, which will lock in all of the dysfunctions of the WHO pandemic response.

“We’re not going to participate in that,” Kennedy asserted, repeating a US position adopted by the new administration of Donald Trump in January – which framed the new agreement as an infringement on sovereignty, a charge robustly denied by WHO and other participating member states.

Kennedy also slammed WHO’s priorities as “increasingly reflecting the biases and interests of corporate medicine” and letting “harmful gender ideology” hijack its core mission.

“Too often… it has become the tool of politics and turned its back on promoting health and health security,” the Health Secretary charged.

Shifting priorities to address chronic diseases

Kennedy pointed to the US plans to shift its national health focus to the epidemic of chronic diseases, as a way forward, and he invited global health leaders to follow a similar course:

“We need to reboot the whole system, as we are doing the United States,” he said, saying that the nation was “fundamentally shifting the priorities of our health agencies to focus on chronic diseases.

“It’s the chronic disease epidemic that is sickening our people and bankrupting our health care system. We’re now pivoting to make our health care system more responsive to this reality. We’re going to make health care in the United States serve the needs of the public instead of industry profit-taking. We’re removing food dyes and other harmful additives from our food supply. We’re investigating the causes of autism and other chronic diseases. We’re seeking to reduce consumption of ultra processed foods, and we’re going to support lifestyle changes that will bolster the immune systems and transform the health of our people.

“Few of these efforts lend themselves easily to profits or serve established special interests. These changes can only occur through the kind of systemic overhaul that President Trump has brought to our country. We’d like to see a similar reordering of priorities on the global stage.”

But infectious diseases also need to remain a priority

At the same time, he acknowledged that infectious disease “and pandemic preparedness,” need to remain national and global priorities. He did not explain how pandemic preparedness could be improved or advanced without global consensus around an accord such as the new Pandemic Agreement.

“Indeed the WHO has, since its inception, accomplished important work, including the eradication of smallpox,” Kennedy stated. “With the leadership of the United States and funding from our country over the past 25 years, millions of global citizens have seen a reduction in premature death due to HIV, TB and malaria,” he added without any reference to the drastic Trump Administration reductions in funding for programmes like the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) as well as the shuttering of the US Agency for International Development, which were responsible for those achievements.

“Let’s return to the core focus of global health and global health security, back to reducing infectious disease burden and the spread of diseases of pandemic potential,” Kennedy said. “I urge the world’s health ministers and the WHO to take our withdrawal from the organization as a wake up call.”

Image Credits: Deutsche Welle, Witkoppen Clinic.