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The United States is preparing to formally withdraw from the World Health Organization on Thursday, a move that has been heavily criticized for its expected negative impact on U.S. and global health.
The decision also appears to violate U.S. law, which requires Washington to pay $260 million in unpaid fees to the U.N. health agency.
President Donald Trump has given notice of his departure from the United States, effective in 2025, and U.S. law requires one year’s notice and all fees to be settled before leaving.
Last year, numerous global health experts, including WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, urged a reconsideration of the decision.
“I hope the United States will reconsider and rejoin the WHO,” he told reporters at a news conference earlier this month. “Withdrawing from the World Health Organization is a loss for the United States and a loss for the rest of the world.”
The World Health Organization also said that the United States has not yet paid its dues for 2024 and 2025. Member states will discuss the U.S. withdrawal and how to handle the issue at the WHO’s executive board in February, a WHO spokesman told Reuters by email.
The State Department did not respond to questions about whether the United States could leave without paying fees or what leaving would mean for global cooperation.
“This is a clear violation of U.S. law,” said Lawrence Gostin, founding director of the O’Neill Institute for Global Health Law at Georgetown University in Washington and a close observer of the World Health Organization. “But Trump will most likely get away with it.”
Bill Gates, chairman of the Gates Foundation, told Reuters in an interview in Davos that he did not expect the United States to reconsider in the short term. The Gates Foundation is a major funder of global health initiatives and some of the work of the World Health Organization.
“I don’t think the United States will return to the WHO in the near future,” he said, adding that when he had the opportunity to advocate for it, he would. “The world needs the World Health Organization.”
what does that mean
For the World Health Organization, the U.S. withdrawal triggered a budget crisis that halved its management team and scaled back its efforts, cutting budgets across the agency. Washington has traditionally been the U.N. health agency’s largest financial supporter, contributing about 18% of its total funding. The World Health Organization will also By the middle of this year, its headcount had shrunk by a quarter.
The agency said it has been cooperating and sharing information with the United States over the last year. It’s unclear how the future collaboration will work.
Global health experts say this poses risks to the United States, the World Health Organization and the world.
Kelly Henning, head of public health programs at Bloomberg Philanthropies, a US non-profit organization, said: “The US withdrawal from the WHO could weaken the systems and cooperation that the world relies on to detect, prevent and respond to health threats.”