United States of America
Partner in global health
This content was last updated on 19 May 2022
A global force for health
Thanks to the United States’ decades of generous contributions to the World Health Organization (WHO), more and more people around the world are enjoying fuller, healthier lives.
Currently WHO’s second-largest Member State contributor, the USA has been a steadfast supporter of the Organization’s work to stop polio, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, while helping advance global health priorities such as primary care for mothers and children, food and drug safety, and global health security.
Through its American Rescue Plan, the USA has helped WHO respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to deliver vaccines. Preparing for the road ahead, the USA is among the WHO Member States working to develop an international mechanism to fortify the world’s defenses against future pandemics.
The USA is also fully aligned with WHO in efforts to protect human health and the environment.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and WHO recently signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on a wide range of environmental and health issues, including air pollution, water and sanitation, children’s health, and the health risks caused by climate change.
All around the world, the USA maintains a strong presence in WHO collaborating centres, lending its expertise to address cancer, occupational health, communicable diseases, nutrition, mental health, chronic diseases and health technologies.
A highly valued partner in times of crisis
Humanitarian operations would not be possible in many countries without U.S. support. In thousands of crises and disease outbreaks, U.S. funding has stopped the spread of disease and helped people stay healthy.
The USA enhances global health security by supporting WHO Health Emergencies Programme across the globe – from prevention through preparedness to early warning, response and recovery.
Today, in Ukraine, the USA is financing emergency support for local health systems and for the millions of refugees who have fled into several neighboring countries.
©WHO/Agata Grzybowska/RATS Agency
In Poland, a health worker assists an 82-year-old Ukrainian refugee with her medications
In Poland, a health worker assists an 82-year-old Ukrainian refugee with her medications
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For decades, a leading donor
Note: The amounts represent the revenue received by WHO for the period stated and they might differ from the figures in the WHO Budget Portal, as they represent funds available net of programme support costs.
The USA has been one of WHO’s largest donors for many years. In 2020-21, it was the third largest, having invested approximately US$ 700 million. More than 65% of that sum was voluntary funding – money the USA donated on top of its annual membership dues.
In December 2021, the USA announced a US$ 280 million contribution to support critical work to help end the COVID-19 pandemic, strengthen public health systems, and provide urgent relief.
WHO is grateful to all the institutions across the U.S. government that contribute with funding and expertise, including the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), PEPFAR and USAID.
Emergency preparedness, outbreak and crisis response
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The USA and WHO have enjoyed a long, fruitful collaboration, providing humanitarian assistance in fragile countries devastated by armed conflict, environmental threats, natural disasters and disease outbreaks.
Particularly in WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean region – where more than half the population faces such challenges – the generous support of partners allows WHO to work with ministries of health and health partners, to strengthen health systems for refugees, internally displaced people, and others in need.
USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) and the Department of State’s Bureau for Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) are among these partners.
When health systems in Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Sudan, Yemen and elsewhere have been ruptured by conflict or stretched to their limits by a disease outbreak, BHA’s funding has bolstered WHO’s work to strengthen health care capacities and provide urgent medicines and supplies.
Thanks to BHA, thousands of internally displaced people received COVID-19 vaccinations in 2021, and humanitarian assistance is connecting with people in Afghanistan and Ukraine.
Support from BHA in this biennium already totals more than US$ 114 million, which includes a significant three-year grant to WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme.
PRM also supports WHO’s work in humanitarian crises. The health and wellbeing of vulnerable people is the focus of current efforts in Afghanistan, Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, Syrian refugee camps in Iraq, and countries neighboring war-torn Ukraine. PRM also supports WHO work to strengthen mental health services amid crises.
The Biological Threat Reduction Program (BTRP), part of the Department of Defense’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, works with WHO to strengthen countries’ biosafety, biosecurity and biosurveillance capacities to confront infectious diseases and weaponized pathogens.
The CDC is a founding member of the Global Outbreak and Response Network (GOARN), an organization that enables WHO to develop the necessary staff and resources to tackle public health emergencies.
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Regulating essential medicines and ensuring food safety
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Strong regulatory systems for food and medical products are critical to any well-functioning health system.
The USA participates in key ways:
Unwavering support to end polio for good
The USA is the largest public-sector donor to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), an international network whose goal is to eradicate polioviruses so that no child ever again suffers paralytic poliomyelitis.
When WHO Member States launched the initiative in 1988, more than 1,000 children were paralyzed by polio every day. Thanks to the work of GPEI, with more than US$ 3.55 billion in support, that number had fallen to six by 2021.
The USA provided WHO and UNICEF with US$ 105 million in 2019 and $US 84 million in 2020 to strengthen surveillance, maintain the global laboratory network, procure vaccines, fund technical assistance for countries, and mobilize communities.
Today, polio is poised to become the second human disease, after smallpox, to be eradicated. In many countries, the experience and infrastructure used to fight polio has been leveraged to fight COVID-19 and Ebola, and to strengthen immunization and pandemic preparedness and response.
Work remains to be done to make polio a disease of the past; the CDC and USAID are providing crucial technical and management assistance for polio eradication in priority countries.
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A polio vaccination campaign in Nigeria in 2019
A polio vaccination campaign in Nigeria in 2019
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Working together to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic by 2030
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In Botswana, a mother on HIV treatment and her HIV-free daughter
In Botswana, a mother on HIV treatment and her HIV-free daughter
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For 15 years and counting, WHO has been working with the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to stop HIV/AIDS through faster, more widespread testing, prevention and treatment.
The collaboration is strengthening countries’ health systems and providing the complex support – building up regulatory capacity, supply chains, strategic information and more – to reach global “95-95-95” targets for 2030. Those targets call for 95% of people living with HIV to know their status, for 95% of that group to be on treatment, and for the 95% of those on treatment to have a suppressed viral load.
A shared goal for PEPFAR and WHO is to help countries maintain the gains they have made against HIV/AIDS. That means providing guidance on fighting dangerous co-infections such as tuberculosis and viral hepatitis, and contributing to innovative care approaches, with special attention to HIV-exposed infants, children, adolescent girls and young women, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and men in areas with a high HIV burden.
PEPFAR and WHO are also collaborating on tools to prevent HIV, such as long-acting PrEP formulations, and resources to promote testing, such as HIV self-tests and social networking.
In 2021-22, PEPFAR funding is enabling WHO’s work on global norms, and its push for impact in Botswana, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, eSwatini, Ethiopia, Ghana, India , Kenya, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malawi, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nigeria, Philippines, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Ukraine, and Zambia.
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WHO leads the health sector response to HIV, viral hepatitis, and sexually transmitted infections through global dialogue and implementation of the Global Health Sector Strategies on HIV, viral hepatitis and sexually transmitted infections (GHSS), 2016‒2021. A GHSS 2022-2030 is being developed and will be submitted to the World Health Assembly. U.S. government partners have been closely involved.
Ending tuberculosis, one of the world’s leading causes of death
The COVID-19 pandemic has reversed years of progress. Data from 2020 shows the first annual increase in TB deaths since 2005.
USAID has contributed US$ 101 million to WHO’s Global Tuberculosis Programme over the past decade. Funding support in 2020-21 focused on developing normative guidance and updates; global TB monitoring, reporting and surveillance; strengthening the use of programmatic data in decision making; and implementing the End TB strategy.
In 2021, WHO launched an initiative that regularly collects, reports and visually presents TB notification data in an effort to gauge the effect of COVID-19 on progress against TB. More than 100 countries that share about 90 percent of the estimated global TB burden are sharing data, which is used to guide the response.
WHO’s efforts to end TB rely on the USA’s continued support.
©WHO/Khaled Akacha
A doctor examines a TB patient in Syria in 2020
A doctor examines a TB patient in Syria in 2020
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Maternal and child health
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A routine immunization in Uzbekistan
A routine immunization in Uzbekistan
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WHO applauds USAID and CDC’s initiatives to prevent the deaths of mothers and children through strong maternal and child health programmes, HIV treatment and comprehensive care of HIV-exposed infants, malaria control, family planning, nutrition, and water and sanitation programmes.
WHO, USAID and other partners collaborate to accelerate progress for newborn health in line with the Every Newborn Action Plan, a tool that places emphasis on improving care for small and sick newborns.
An ever-expanding body of guidance, developed by WHO and partners, puts the focus squarely on areas with a high burden of infant mortality. These materials include Survive and Thrive: transforming care for every small and sick newborn (2019), the Roadmap on human resource strategies to improve newborn care in health facilities in low- and middle-income countries (2020), and WHO’s postnatal care guidelines.
The CDC works closely with WHO on the Global Validation of Elimination of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV and Syphilis Advisory Committee to support and validate countries as they succeed in eliminating mother-to-child transmission.
The WHO/CDC Syphilis Serology Proficiency Programme works to improve regional capacity and quality of syphilis testing worldwide, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.
In 2015, Cuba became the first country to eliminate mother-to-child transmission, as measured by WHO global validation criteria. Since then, another 10 countries have been validated.
The USA shares its expertise through WHO collaborating centres
Collaborating centres are institutions that have been solid allies for years in helping WHO to implement its mandated work. WHO works with 74 collaborating centres hosted in the USA. The CDC has 17 collaborating centres, three of them in the Division of High-Consequence Pathogens and Pathology.
Since 1956, CDC’s Influenza Division has served as a collaborating centre for surveillance, epidemiology, and control of influenza in Atlanta, Georgia. It is the largest global centre supporting public health interventions to control and prevent pandemic and seasonal influenza.
USAID's Emerging Pandemic Threats 2 Program helps minimize the global impact of pandemic influenza threats, particularly from the H5N1 highly pathogenic avian flu. In addition, CDC’s Division of Global Health Protection serves as the collaborating centre for global public informatics, for biosafety and biosecurity, and for international health regulations.
CDC’s Viral Special Pathogens Branch supports WHO and Member States in the early diagnosis, rapid identification, and epidemiologic investigation of global high-risk pathogen outbreaks like Ebola, Nipah, and Marburg virus.
Experts from the CDC provide technical guidance for national laboratories involved in outbreak response, as well as onsite laboratory diagnostic support with staff and equipment. These collaborations advance the world’s ability to prevent, detect, and respond to a wide range of health threats.
The US Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, serves as a collaborating centre for global cancer control and health and the environment.
Revered academic institutions in the USA also contribute to WHO through collaborating centres. These include Boston University, Columbia University, Johns Hopkins, National Cancer Institute, New York University, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, and Yale University.