The United States has announced it will release $600 million in funding for Gavi, the global vaccine alliance, ending a freeze imposed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — but with a significant condition attached: the World Health Organization will be explicitly excluded from receiving any of those funds. The joint announcement by the State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services marks a rare reversal within the Trump administration, and a rebuke of Kennedy's broader vaccine-sceptic agenda.
Gavi, formally known as the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, was established over 25 years ago to expand access to affordable vaccines in lower-income countries. It supports immunisation programmes against roughly 20 diseases, including measles, malaria, and polio, and is estimated to have prevented more than 20 million deaths since its founding. The United States has historically provided around a quarter of its budget, and Congress has allocated funding to the organisation for more than two decades. Kennedy had frozen the $600 million — intended for 2025 and 2026 — citing concerns about thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in some multi-dose vaccines, which he has claimed is linked to autism. That claim has been repeatedly and comprehensively rejected by scientific consensus, including by US public health agencies.
The compromise reached sees Gavi agreeing to work towards replacing thimerosal-containing vaccines with mercury-free alternatives, in partnership with its board and member countries. Vaccine experts have warned that this shift carries real costs: moving from multi-dose to single-dose vials to avoid bacterial contamination — the reason thimerosal is used — significantly raises expenses and could reduce the number of children Gavi is able to vaccinate. The State Department, led by Secretary Marco Rubio, has reclaimed oversight of the US–Gavi relationship, pushing back against Kennedy's unilateral freeze, though officials have stressed that Kennedy's views will still be taken into account.
Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who chairs the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee and led a bipartisan push to restore the funds before they expired on 30 September 2026, welcomed the decision. Her argument centred on self-interest as much as humanitarian concern: stopping disease outbreaks abroad, she has argued, is the most effective way to prevent them from reaching US borders.
The exclusion of the WHO from this funding pipeline fits a pattern of escalating hostility toward the UN health body. Trump withdrew the US from the WHO on the first day of his second term in January 2025, and suspended all US contributions. During his first term, he had similarly halted funding over the WHO's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. The WHO, which operates on a budget of roughly $3.4 billion — about a third of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — funds programmes combating tuberculosis, HIV, polio, and other diseases, and coordinates responses to health emergencies in conflict zones including Gaza, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Analysts have described the administration's stance toward the WHO as driven primarily by ideology rather than a coherent strategic or public health rationale.