Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is calling on other countries to exit the World Health Organization and join the United States in bilateral and multilateral agreements to advance global public health goals. 

Kennedy said in a video address on Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s day-one executive order to leave the group ought to be a “wake-up call” to other WHO member states that the international body is corrupted by political and corporate interests, evidenced by the WHO’s failures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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“We’ve already been in contact with like-minded countries, and we encourage others to consider joining us,” said Kennedy. “We want to free international health cooperation from the straitjacket of political interference by corrupting influences of the pharmaceutical companies, of adversarial nations, and their NGO proxies.”

Kennedy elaborated further on the reason Trump decided to withdraw from the WHO, saying that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO “suppressed reports at critical junctures of human-to-human transmission” due to pressures from the Chinese Communist Party.

The secretary also said that the WHO succumbed to CCP pressure to obscure research activities on bat coronaviruses conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, which multiple U.S. and international security agencies now believe to be the original source of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Kennedy’s video address coincides with the 78th meeting of the World Health Assembly this week in Geneva, Switzerland, where member states are expected to vote on the adoption of the Pandemic Accords treaty, creating a framework for international pandemic cooperation. 

Within hours of Kennedy publishing his message, 124 countries present at the Assembly meeting voted in favor of the Pandemic Accords. Only 11 countries, including Poland, Israel, Russia, Slovakia, Italy, and Iran, abstained.

The treaty must now be ratified domestically by 60 member states before it becomes effective.

Even before the U.S. withdrew from the WHO, the likelihood of the U.S. ratifying the Pandemic Accords was very low, particularly because of the degree to which signatories must share intellectual property on vaccines and therapeutics with other countries during global health emergencies.

Kennedy referenced the agreement in his speech, saying that the agreement “will lock in all of the dysfunctions of the WHO pandemic response.” 

“We’re not going to participate in that,” said Kennedy. “We need to reboot the whole system, as we’re doing in the United States.” 

Although Kennedy did not reference his trademark slogan, “Make America Healthy Again,” he did highlight the ways the U.S. is reworking its public health priorities to emphasize that countering chronic disease, such as by curbing consumption of ultra-processed foods, will in the long run “bolster the immune systems and transform the health of our people.”

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Kennedy said that he and Trump would like to “see a similar reordering of priorities on the global stage.”

“Let’s create new institutions or revisit existing institutions that are lean, efficient, transparent, and accountable, whether it’s an emergency outbreak of an infectious disease or the pervasive rot of chronic conditions that have been overtaking not just America but the whole world,” said Kennedy. “We’re ready to work with you.”