Gates Foundation Donations to WHO Nearly Match Those From U.S. Government
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP announced Friday afternoon that the United States would be "terminating" the country's relationship with the World Health Organization and redirecting funding elsewhere. If such a halt on U.S. funding to the WHO becomes permanent, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would become the top donor to the international agency, above any government in the world.
The U.S. government and the Gates Foundation had each been slated to contribute about 9% of the overall WHO budget for 2021-21 in voluntary funding, according to publicly available data, more than $400 million each for a total biennial budget of about $5.5 billion.
The Gates Foundation has been a key donor to the WHO over the past decade, accounting for as much as 13% of the group's budget for the 2016-17 period. In February, the foundation pledged $100 million to fight the coronavirus pandemic, and it upped that to $250 million in April after an order from Trump brought U.S. government funding to a halt.
The U.S. government has also historically paid assessed contributions, which are essentially dues for being a member-state of the organization that are scaled by income and population. In the 2020-21 budget, assessed contributions for the U.S. account for $116 million.
Voluntary contributions, unlike assessed contributions, allow donors to earmark funds for specific projects. Both the U.S. and the Gates Foundation directed significant portions of their voluntary contributions to programs focused on the global eradication of polio. Improved access to vaccines and other essential medicines is another top priority identified by the Gates Foundation, which has been a source of rampant conspiracy theories, especially recently.
Earlier this month, Trump threatened that he would freeze funding to the WHO unless the organization made "substantive improvements." Trump's key gripe with the WHO appears to be an "alarming lack of independence"
from China that he claims affected the organization's response to the coronavirus pandemic. WHO budget data shows that voluntary, earmarked contributions from China are a fraction compared to those from the U.S., effectively making U.S. dollars and priorities more prominent in WHO activities.
After the U.S., the member-states with the largest voluntary contributions to the WHO budget are the U.K., Germany and Japan.
