US formally exits World Health Organization, locking in Trump’s break with global health body
The United States has formally completed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday. Trump signed an executive order on his...
By Fox News · Fox News
The United States has formally completed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday. Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office in 2025 announcing the U.S.' intention to withdraw from the WHO due to its mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and a host of other issues the president took issue with, such as "onerous payments" that didn't match contributions from other member states. A year later, nearly to the day, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of State announced that the withdrawal from the health organization is complete. The U.S. has been a member of the WHO since its establishment in 1948. The WHO is a specialized agency within the United Nations that is responsible for coordinating global public health efforts, including disease surveillance and outbreak response. FORMER BRITISH PM URGES TRUMP TO DISMANTLE UN, CITING INTERNATIONAL BODY'S ‘BAD DECISIONS’ At the heart of the withdrawal is the Trump administration's dissatisfaction with the agency for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and its ties to China . "The WHO delayed declaring a global public health emergency and a pandemic during the early stages of COVID-19, costing the world critical weeks as the virus spread," HHS said in a press release on the official withdrawal. "During that period, WHO leadership echoed and praised China's response despite evidence of early underreporting, suppression of information and delays in confirming human-to-human transmission." TRUMP FLOATS ‘BOARD OF PEACE’ TO REPLACE UN, SIGNALS MAJOR GLOBAL POWER SHIFT A senior HHS official stressed to the media during a call Thursday previewing the withdrawal that the U.S. will remain a global leader on public health following the change. The senior HHS official said that despite the U.S. funding up to 25% of the WHO's operations, there has never been a U.S. director of the organization, while citi…