MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

RFK, Jr., and Milei agree on creating an alternative to the WHO

RFK Jr. insisted on the creation of an alternative international health system free of totalitarian impulses

Argentina, under President Javier Milei, announced its withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), becoming the first country in the region to do so, following the United States' exit under President Donald Trump.

US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. met with Argentine President Javier Milei at Casa Rosada on Tuesday to strengthen a strategic health partnership between the two nations. Both leaders criticized the World Health Organization (WHO) for recommendations allegedly driven by political and bureaucratic interests rather than science, advocating for an alternative international health system based on scientific evidence and national sovereignty.

The meeting also featured Argentine Health Minister Mario Lugones, US Chargé d'Affaires Abigail Dressel, and Kennedy’s advisor Stefanie Nicole Spear. Argentina’s Health Ministry announced plans to impose stricter controls on food, medicines, and vaccines, including requiring clinical studies with placebo groups for vaccines, citing the Covid-19 vaccine’s exceptional approval as an example. Kennedy, known for his vaccine skepticism, has denied being anti-vaccine but has a history of opposing certain immunization policies.

Kennedy endorsed Milei's initiative to join an alternative organization to the WHO, which both countries have exited, as Foreign Minister Gerardo Werthein confirmed Tuesday, making Argentina the first country in the region to follow in on US President Donald Trump's move. The US Embassy in Buenos Aires highlighted the meeting through its social networks, underlining the joint commitment to work on a common health agenda as Milei's administration argued that the international community needed to reevaluate the role of supranational bodies and defend the health sovereignty of each country.

“I had a wonderful meeting with Argentine President @JMilei about our nations' mutual withdrawal from the WHO and the creation of an alternative international health system based on reference science and free of totalitarian impulses, corruption and political control,” the nephew of assassinated former President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and son of former Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who was also assassinated, highlighted on social media.

“President Javier Milei and the Minister of Health of the Nation, Mario Lugones, received in Casa Rosada the Secretary of Health of the United States, Robert Kennedy Jr, and his entourage,” Buenos Aires also posted.