A US-proposed assessment of the island’s healthcare system is “deeply problematic,” Anna Wangenheim has said
The government of Greenland has condemned an unofficial visit by a US doctor to assess the island’s healthcare system during an American diplomatic trip to Nuuk.
The controversy comes amid US President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to take over the autonomous Danish territory.
The four-day visit by a US delegation, including US Ambassador to Denmark Kenneth Howery and Trump’s special envoy to Greenland, Jeff Landry, began on Sunday. The stated goal is to attend a business forum and open a new US consular office in the capital, Nuuk.
The controversy erupted after physician Joseph Griffin, part of the delegation, told Danish broadcaster TV 2 on Monday that Landry had personally invited him to Nuuk to help “assess the medical needs” of Greenland.
Griffin insisted he was acting as a “volunteer” and planned to speak with Greenlanders to learn “how healthcare is practiced here.”
Health Minister Anna Wangenheim called Griffin’s presence “deeply problematic.” In a social media post on Monday, she insisted that “Greenlanders are not guinea pigs in a geopolitical project.” While acknowledging “chronic” staff shortages, she warned against developing Greenland’s healthcare system “through political envoys with hidden strategic interests.”
Landry has become a controversial figure in Greenland after repeatedly criticizing the island’s healthcare system and backing Trump’s February proposal to send a US hospital ship to the territory, a plan firmly rejected by officials in Nuuk.
He also previously vowed to be “very aggressive in delivering healthcare to remote parts” of the island, while stating that the hospital ship proposal had been discussed with the Pentagon.
The dispute comes amid Trump’s push to bring Greenland under greater US control, supposedly on national security grounds. The president has described the mineral-rich Arctic territory as strategically vital for countering Russia and China, while White House officials earlier this year said military force to acquire the island was “always an option.”
In an apparent snub to the US delegation, Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen has refused to participate in the opening of the new US consulate.
Healthcare remains politically sensitive in Greenland because of abuses committed during Danish colonial rule. Last year, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen formally apologized over the so-called IUD scandal, in which thousands of Greenlandic women and girls were reportedly fitted with contraceptive devices without their knowledge or consent in the 1960s and 1970s.
