Africa Must Rethink Health Funding After Trumps Who Exit: Expert

A public health expert has warned that President Donald Trumps decision to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization will affect Africas health responses and says that the continent must rethink its financing of public health.

It is time for some of the African member states to rethink the financing of public health," Ngashi Ngongo, principal advisor to the director general and the continental incident manager for Mpox at the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention Africa CDC, told a media briefing.

"We know the role that the WHO has played on the continent... to really improve the delivery of health programmes...The reduction or the cutting of US funding is definitely going to affect the response, he said.

Soon after taking office last week, Trump signed an executive order intending to withdraw the US from the WHO, citing the organisations performance during the Covid-19 pandemic and what he claimed was an imbalance in the organisations funding between the US and China. The WHO is led by Ethiopian director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the first African to head the organisation.

Numerous African countries rely on US investments through the WHO to fund public health initiatives: the US accounts for 15 of total WHO funding . Ngongo said Africa CDC might look to other non-African countries to overcome the expected decrease in WHO support from the US withdrawal.