MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina's Health Minister welcomes Robert F. Kennedy Jr

With RFK Jr., Lugones confirmed Argentina was pulling from the World Health Organization (WHO)

Argentina's Health Minister Mario Lugones met Monday with US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to align Javier Milei's government with Washington's administration in this regard. Both officials confirmed Buenos Aires' withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), criticizing its unscientific approach and political influence.

Additional measures include reviewing national health organizations, promoting health sovereignty, ensuring safer food, fast-tracking high-cost drugs, and evaluating vaccine evidence. Lugones and Kennedy discussed healthcare deregulation. The visiting official was interested in Argentina's reforms, such as electronic prescriptions and biosimilars. Further meetings with President Milei and other officials were planned for this week.

“Today, the evidence indicates that WHO prescriptions do not work, because they are not based on science but on political interests and bureaucratic structures that are reluctant to review their own mistakes. Far from correcting the course, the WHO has opted to expand competencies that do not correspond to it and to condition the health sovereignty of countries,” they said in a statement.

“In view of this, it is urgent that the international community rethinks the meaning of supranational organizations: if they are financed by all, they must be accountable, fulfill the purposes for which they were created and not become platforms for political imposition over the member States,” the declaration went on.

As soon as he began his second term in office last January, Trump signed an executive order for the United States to withdraw from the WHO, in which he questioned the organization's “mismanagement” of the Covid-19 pandemic and other global health crises. He also criticized “its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms” and “its inability to demonstrate independence in the face of inappropriate political influence from WHO member states.”

“Together with Robert Kennedy Jr., we believe in the future of global health collaboration. We have similar visions about the direction to follow, and we are confident that this will give us the possibility to deepen the work between both countries,” said Lugones.

“We agree on the need to promote healthier citizens, based on better nutrition. To that end, we are going to carry out a comprehensive review of the toxic ingredients present in ultra-processed products and rethink the approach to chronic diseases,” he also pointed out.

“Together with Deregulation Minister Federico Sturzenegger, we told Secretary Kennedy about the progress made by the National Government in the deregulation of the healthcare system that we are carrying out,” Lugones further explained.

Kennedy is to meet with President Milei Tuesday morning and Foreign Minister Gerardo Werthein in the afternoon, after which he will return to the US.