Argentina’s president has ordered the country’s withdrawal from the WHO due to “profound differences” with the UN agency, a presidential spokesperson said on Wednesday.
Argentine President Javier Milei’s decision echoes that of his ally, US President Donald Trump, who began the process of pulling the US out of the WHO with an executive order on his first day back in office on Jan. 21.
The loss of another member country would further fracture cooperation in global health, although Argentina was expected to provide only about US$8 million to the WHO for the agency’s estimated US$6.9 billion budget for last year and this year.
Photo: AP
Argentina’s decision is based on “profound differences in health management, especially during the [COVID-19] pandemic,” spokesman Manuel Adorni told a news conference in Buenos Aires.
He said WHO guidelines at the time led to the largest shutdown “in the history of mankind.”
Argentina would not allow an international organization to intervene in its sovereignty “and much less in our health,” he added.
The WHO has no authority to compel countries to take specific health actions, and the organization’s guidelines and recommendations, including in health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, are often disregarded.
The WHO said it was looking into Argentina’s announcement.
Adorni did not say when Milei’s decision would be implemented. He also said that the WHO lacks independence because of the political influence of some countries, without naming any.
The WHO is the only organization mandated to coordinate global responses to acute health crises, particularly outbreaks of new diseases and persistent threats including Ebola, AIDS and mpox.
Milei was a sharp critic of the lockdown imposed by former Argentine president Alberto Fernandez during the COVID-19 pandemic, asserting that it hurt the economy and that the government used it as a mechanism of “repression.”
“LONG LIVE FREEDOM,” Milei wrote on X on Wednesday criticizing the UN agency.
Argentina does not receive WHO funding for health management, and the president’s decision does not affect the quality of health services, Adorni said.
“On the contrary, it gives greater flexibility to implement policies adopted to the context of interests that Argentina requires,” he added.
Last year, Milei’s government refused to sign an agreement to manage pandemics within the WHO framework, on the grounds that doing so could affect national sovereignty.
The announcement on the WHO comes ahead of Milei’s trip to the US later this month, which coincides with the Conservative Political Action Conference summit of right-wing leaders in Washington.
The spokesperson has not confirmed that Milei would attend or that he might meet Trump.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
RSS