China announces the transfer of an additional $500 million to WHO

The Chinese government announced Tuesday that it will disburse $500 million to provide the World Health Organization (WHO) with funds. China's transfer was announced on the same day that the organization ratified its new pandemic plan.

According to China, this disbursement is aimed at alleviating the lack of funding after the exit of the United States from the grant plan to the international organization.

With this participation, China increases the amount it donated in the previous contribution period by more than $300 million. The United States, before abandoning funding to the organization, donated up to $700 million for the period 2024 and 2025.

According to EFE news agency, the WHO Secretariat General has confirmed this donation and the Chinese authorities assure that their intention is for the organization to continue with its mandate and work "in an independent, professional and scientifically governed manner."

Chinese Vice Premier Liu Guizhong declared on Tuesday in Geneva, Switzerland, that the world "is facing the impact of unilateralism," something that also "poses challenges for global health," but affirmed that in the face of this, multilateral policy "is the way to face the difficulties and challenges of the world."

Kennedy calls to abandon the organization

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday urged other countries to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO) and create alternative institutions and affirmed that this U.N. agency is moribund.

Kennedy addressed the annual U.N. assembly in a video after U.S. President Donald Trump announced in January that his country will withdraw from the agency, a process that takes about a year.

"I urge the world's health ministers and the WHO to take our withdrawal from the organisation as a wake-up call," Kennedy said in a video sent to the U.N. agency's annual assembly.

In his speech Kennedy claimed that this U.N. agency is subject to undue influence from China, gender ideology and the pharmaceutical industry.

Kennedy, known for his anti-vaccine stances, addressed the assembly after the WHO announced Tuesday that it adopted an international agreement on pandemic prevention and cooperation.

The senior official said the WHO is mired in "bureaucratic bloat, entrenched paradigms, conflicts of interest and international power politics" and said the United States is in contact with countries with similar views.

"We urge others to consider joining us," he said. "We don't have to suffer the limits of a moribund WHO – let's create new institutions or revisit existing institutions that are lean, efficient, transparent and accountable."

Kennedy argued that often WHO's priorities reflected "the biases and interests of corporate medicine" and claimed that organization allowed the installation of political agendas such as the "promotion of gender ideology."

Kennedy complained of China's undue influence on the agency.

He further accused WHO of withholding reports on human-to-human transmission of COVID and then collaborating with China to spread the myth that "COVID originated in bats or pangolins, rather than in Chinese government-funded research at a biological laboratory in Wuhan."