When US President Donald Trump was handed the folder with an executive order to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO), he exclaimed, “Ooh, that’s a big one!”
Mr Trump has used his first days back in office to sign a flurry of executive actions.
Among them was a move that sets a 12-month notice period for the United States to leave the United Nations health agency and stop all financial contributions to its work.
The US is by far the WHO’s largest financial backer.
Experts fear the exit could roll back decades-long gains made in fighting diseases such as AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
It could also weaken the world’s defences against new outbreaks capable of triggering pandemics.
Why Trump wants to withdraw from the WHO
Mr Trump has accused the WHO of mishandling the COVID-19 pandemic and other international health crises.
He said it had failed to act independently from the “inappropriate political influence of WHO member states” and required “unfairly onerous payments” from the US.
He argued that US funding was disproportionate to the sums provided by other, larger countries, such as China.
“World Health ripped us off,…