(Reuters) -The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration took part in a World Health Organization meeting to discuss flu vaccine composition, an official at the UN agency said on Friday.
President Donald Trump started the 12-month withdrawal process for the U.S. to leave the WHO on his first day in office in January and has since also overseen a dismantling of U.S. foreign aid that has hit health programs worldwide.
“We hope that the pause in the work that we’re doing with the U.S. is temporary and we hope that we will be able to resume that in full force in the coming weeks,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, Director of Department of Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness and Prevention at WHO.
“There’s information that’s coming out from the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the animal side, so I want to be very clear that the U.S. is still contributing,” Kerkhove said.
Despite its broader pullback from the WHO, the U.S. has not moved to quit the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the specialised health agency for the Americas and the WHO’s regional office for the Americas.
(Reporting by Mariam Sunny and Puyaan Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid)
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