The United States has officially left the World Health Organisation after a year of warnings that doing so would hurt public health in the US and globally, saying its decision reflected failures in the UN health agency’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic.
President Donald Trump gave notice that the US would quit the organisation on the first day of his presidency in 2025, via an executive order.
According to a press release on Thursday from the US Health and State Departments, the US will only work with the WHO in a limited fashion in order to effectuate the withdrawal.
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“We have no plans to participate as an observer, and we have no plans of rejoining,” a senior government health official said.
The US said it plans to work directly with other countries – rather than through an international organisation – on disease surveillance and other public health priorities.
Under US law, it was supposed to give one-year notice and pay all outstanding fees – around $US260 million ($A380 million) – before departing.
But a US State Department official disputed that the statute contains a condition that any payment needs to be made before withdrawal.
“The American people have paid more than enough,” a State Department spokesperson said in an email earlier on Thursday.
The Department of Health and Human Services said in a document released on Thursday that the government had ended its funding contributions to the agency. Trump had exercised his authority to pause the future transfer of any US government resources to the WHO because the organisation had cost the US trillions of dollars, the HHS spokesperson said.
The US flag had been removed from outside the WHO headquarters in Geneva on Thursday, according to witnesses.
In recent weeks, the US has moved to exit a number of other United Nations organisations, and some fear that Trump’s recently launched Board of Peace could undermine the UN as a whole.
The US departure has sparked a financial crisis that has seen the WHO cut its management team in half and scale back work, cutting budgets across the agency. Washington has traditionally been by far the UN health agency’s biggest financial backer, contributing around 18 per cent of its overall funding. The WHO will also shed around a quarter of its staff by the middle of this year.
The agency said it has been working with the US and sharing information in the last year. It was unclear how the collaboration will work going forward.
Global health experts said this posed risks for the US, the WHO and the world.
“The US withdrawal from WHO could weaken the systems and collaborations the world relies on to detect, prevent, and respond to health threats,” said Kelly Henning, public health program lead at Bloomberg Philanthropies, a US-based non-profit.
