It was a historic day for health sovereignty for American citizens. On January 22, 2026, the White House released Executive Order #14155, which formally withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization. While this decision was made a year ago, the terms of membership required a one-year waiting period to exit the organization. Health Freedom Defense Fund voices its full support of this steadfast move, and hopes that it will be a durable one. The WHO was and remains the world's top supporter of one-size-fits-all medicine, and it facilitated and legitimized most of the excesses and crimes of the "pandemic" era.
The WHO constitution, written in 1948, was an optimistic and exceptionally naive document that was full of flowery language and vague mandates. In theory, cooperation is always nice, but in practice, the details and results are what matters. And if the cost of this arrangement was loss of sovereignty over our own health decisions, billions of dollars in funding, and a continuation of a paternalistic attitude toward individual choices and local control, no trade off could be worth it.
For eight decades after the Second World War, the WHO consulted UN member states on health matters and policy, issued medical guidelines, hosted working groups, and held opulent galas to celebrate their own achievements. Privileges and immunities, both legal and social, were showered upon its officials. Despite admitting doing no actual "implementation" of health programs, the WHO was quick to dubiously note its own impact through its various meetings and declarations, all to justify its existence, and to extend its reach and budget. Over that time period, the United States was by far its largest donor, and certainly in turn used the WHO for its own purposes of maintaining easy financial support for favored regimes abroad. It did this while dictating other country's policies to benefit American pharmaceutical and diagnostic corporations' bottom line.
Until very recently, the WHO served as a lead technical advisor to huge amounts of U.S. taxpayer money going around the world through USAID, PEPFAR, The Global Fund, and other mechanisms. So instead of U.S. citizens and their elected representatives deciding how health and development assistance money should have been spent, the WHO was inappropriately and secretly advising how and when American taxpayer money should be spent. In so doing, it not only interfered with our representative republic, but also enriched themselves via American generosity with exorbitant tax-free salaries, diplomatic immunity, and insufferable arrogance.
More importantly, in so doing, the WHO decided the fates of billions of people by its arbitrary, unaccountable guidelines and recommendations. Even if we are to believe the lofty goals of the WHO were genuine, and if we believed the fantastic claims of effectiveness of a given drug or intervention, the WHO often stood in the way of poor people receiving the same access to care as those in rich countries, in effect "kicking away the ladder" so poor people couldn't access the very care available in richer countries.
As an example, the WHO excluded horrific ailments like childhood tuberculosis, from the official treatment guidelines, so member states for decades never received funding to treat children for the ailment under the utilitarian justification that “it is necessary to make the best possible use of limited resources”[1]. So even by its own terms, it was a shameful failure that stood in the way of countries making their own decisions for decades. And so, it remains.
Ultimately, in practice, the WHO attempted to continue a legacy of colonial control that eventually started to also include control over rich countries through its Covid-19 guidelines and arbitrary measures like social distancing and masking. Even newer instruments like the Pandemic Treaty would have eviscerated the sovereignty of all member states to make their own decisions in health emergencies. Thankfully, for now, the country is safe from this meddling by foreign bureaucrats.
With this announcement, one less country, and one huge donor, will no longer be involved in this scheme. With the departure of the United States, the top donors will be Bill Gates’ "philanthropic" organizations like The Gates Foundation and GAVI, with China leading the way as a state donor. HFDF sincerely hopes that countries around the world consider these facts before giving money to the WHO, listening to its advice, or assuming it has their best interests in mind.
[1] 1974. WHO Expert Committee on Tuberculosis: 9th Report. World Health Organization
