The World Health Organisation was one of the first targets of Donald Trump’s ‘drain the swamp’ agenda.

On January 20, the President signed an Executive Order to withdraw the US from the WHO citing ‘mishandling of the Covid pandemic that arose in Wuhan, China, and other global health crises’.

The order also took issue with the WHO’s ‘failure to adopt urgently needed reforms and its inability to demonstrate independence from inappropriate political influence of WHO member states’.

WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus has come out to defend the WHO’s position.

‘Two weeks ago, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order announcing his intention to withdraw the US from the WHO. The Order refers to the WHO’s alleged mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic and other global health crises. Last week marked five years since I declared a public health emergency of international concern … from the moment we picked up the first signals of viral pneumonia in Wuhan, we asked for more information, activated our emergency incident management system, alerted the world, convened global experts, and published comprehensive guidance for countries on how to protect their populations and health systems all before the first death from this new disease was reported in China on the 11th of January 2020.’

Tedros then admitted that the WHO was already facing a funding crisis before the US withdrew its chequebook.

In the 2024-25 period, the US gave the WHO nearly a billion dollars.

The WHO put out a few dying cries of protest at the time of the Executive Order, but the President held fast and the usual suspects who would ordinarily defend the WHO were too busy panicking about the annihilation of USAID.

Fast forward a month to February 27, and the WHO is out warning that its enormous laboratory conglomerate GREMLIN (the Global Measles and Rubella Laboratory Network) which contains 760 labs around the world, is suffering a critical funding shortage.

Some members of the press have been quick to point out that there is a Measles outbreak in Texas at the same time the GREMLIN labs are in danger of collapsing. This line of thinking forgets that the conditions for the outbreak were created while the GREMLIN labs were funded and running at their normal operation and that the unvaccinated community involved are mostly a deeply religious sect who did not make their decision due to RFK Jr or Donald Trump. The outbreak in Texas, and others like it, cannot be used as justification for the US to remain in the WHO unless you like to grasp at really short straws and draw a lot of longbows.

In response to their funding shortfall, the WHO has taken a page out of the Canadian Trucker Freedom Fighters’ book and started a crowdfunding project called, ‘One Dollar, One World’.

Their goal is to raise $1 billion.

So far they have $160,000.

As the WHO wrote in its announcement: ‘It’s about people standing together to remind us that health is a right, not a privilege.’

Screenshot from WhoFoundationDonorSupport

And while 5,000 donors have stepped forward so far, crowdfunding is usually seen as a temporary solution, not a stable revenue stream.

It was originally assumed that the WHO’s remaining members would step up and cover the gap, considering they had been getting a discount with the excessive generosity of the US. Instead, nations such as Italy and Argentina thinking about withdrawing.

The WHO’s call to action is hardly likely to appeal to Trump’s base as their pitch it includes the overused, ‘no one is safe until everyone is safe’ line from the pandemic and ‘turn concern into action and show that solidarity, just like health, knows no borders’.

‘The world is at a tipping point. Conflict, climate change, epidemics, and displacement are converging to create an unprecedented global health crisis.’

Strange how the WHO failed to mention the cause of the last global pandemic … a Chinese lab playing around with viruses. Maybe Trump is onto something… Defund the labs and stop the next pandemic.

Just, don’t tell Albanese or Dutton. Knowing those two, they’ll get into a pre-election bidding war with our money and pledge to save the WHO or some other nonsense.