World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Thursday that he still hopes the U.S. administration will reconsider its decision to withdraw from the organisation next month, warning that its exit would be a loss for the world.
In one of his first actions as president, Donald Trump signed an order to withdraw from the WHO, citing the agency’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and its close relationship with China. The withdrawal is set to take effect on 22 January 2026.
Responding to reporters, Tedros said, “There are things you can get only at the WHO and nowhere else. These issues are health security issues, and that’s why we were asking the U.S. to reconsider, because the world can only be secure if we are all on the same platform.”
“Their absence from the WHO is going to be a lose-lose: the U.S. will lose, and the rest of the world will also lose,” he added.
Tedros said U.S. criticisms of the organisation were unfounded, noting that the WHO had addressed these concerns, including through cost-cutting reforms. On allegations of mismanaging the pandemic, he said lessons had been learned.
He also stated that Washington, the WHO’s largest donor, should contribute less in order to reduce the organisation’s dependence on a single donor.
Tedros further noted that, despite initial instructions from the Trump administration for U.S. health officials not to contact the WHO, they had regularly sought information, which the organisation had provided.
“We have given them any information they need, because at the end of the day the WHO’s existence is to make the American people safe and the rest of the world safe,” Tedros said.
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Hungary’s election winner Péter Magyar has said he does not support Ukraine’s fast-track entry to the European Union and will uphold an opt-out allowing Hungary to avoid contributing to a €90 billion EU loan for Kyiv.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is on a five-day visit to China, his fourth trip in four years, highlighting Spain’s push to strengthen economic and strategic relations with the world’s second-largest economy.
Hungarians vote in elections on Sunday that could see the end of hard right nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s more than 15 year rule. Opinion polls show Orbán’s Fidesz party trailing 45-year-old Péter Magyar’s centre-right opposition Tisza party.
U.S. and Iranian negotiators held their highest-level talks in half a century in Pakistan on Saturday in an effort to end their six-week war, as President Donald Trump said the U.S. military had begun the process of clearing the Strait of Hormuz.
Israel has reprimanded Spain’s most senior diplomat in Tel Aviv after a giant effigy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was blown up in a Spanish town.
At least 30 people were killed on Saturday in a stampede at Haiti’s Laferrière Citadel World Heritage Site, with authorities warning that the death toll could rise.
Donald Trump has warned that any Iranian ships approaching a declared U.S. blockade zone in the Strait of Hormuz will be “immediately eliminated”, as tensions escalate over maritime restrictions in the Gulf. The comments come after weekend peace talks in Pakistan failed to reach an agreement.
A Chinese biotechnology company is stepping up efforts to combine artificial intelligence (AI) with advanced genetic testing in a bid to improve the success rates of in vitro fertilization (IVF), while also tapping into growing demand for fertility services.
Austria’s government on Friday approved plans to introduce a nationwide ban on social media use for children under the age of 14, alongside reforms to upper secondary school curricula aimed at boosting media literacy and Artificial Intelligence (AI) education from the 2027/28 academic year.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said that as of Wednesday evening, it has identified six new cases of meningococcal disease in Kent, bringing the total of confirmed or suspected cases to at least 27.
The Scottish Parliament has voted against legalising assisted dying, ending a years-long campaign to make Scotland the first part of the UK to allow the practice.
The war in the Middle East is beginning to disrupt the flow of critical medicines to Gulf countries, raising concerns about the supply of cancer treatments and other temperature-sensitive drugs, according to pharmaceutical industry executives.
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