Today the United States officially withdrew from the World Health Organization (WHO), one year after the Trump administration shared its intention to leave the global agency.

At that time, the United States was said to provide about 20% of the WHO’s operational budget, but this week WHO officials said the United States has failed to pay membership dues for both 2024 and 2025, leaving the global alliance with a $278 million debt.

The WHO says withdrawal is not complete until the United States pays its debts.

“The United States will not be making any payments to the WHO before our withdrawal,” the State Department told NPR in a statement earlier this week. “The cost born by the U.S. taxpayer and U.S. economy after the WHO’s failure during the Covid pandemic—and since—has been too high as it is.”

The United States is the only country to have withdrawn from the WHO since its founding 1948. During his inauguration last year, President Donald Trump said the WHO had gouged the United States, and he blamed the agency for covering up China’s role in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump had also tried to leave the WHO during his first presidential term, after the pandemic began, but President Joe Biden reversed that plan on his first day of office in 2020.

WHO bylaws require nations to give a one-year advance notice of withdrawal and to settle all debts before the exit is complete.

IDSA says move is shortsighted

Today the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) said the move will jeopardize virus surveillance for the United States.

By withdrawing from WHO, the U.S. will no longer participate in the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System, the vital platform for monitoring flu cases and sharing data and viral samples used to develop yearly flu vaccines

“The U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization is a shortsighted and misguided abandonment of our global health commitments,” IDSA President Ronald G. Nahass, MD, said in a statement. “Whether facing emerging threats like Ebola or the persistent burden of annual flu outbreaks, international tracking is essential. By withdrawing from WHO, the U.S. will no longer participate in the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System, the vital platform for monitoring flu cases and sharing data and viral samples used to develop yearly flu vaccines. This will severely hamper efforts to match vaccines to circulating strains of flu.”

Also today, Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) criticized the Trump administration for its past year of withdrawing foreign aid from a number of agencies. The group also said the America First Global Health program unveiled by the White House in September 2025 does little to address sexual and reproductive health, nutrition, and non-communicable diseases.

Moreover, the America First strategy is openly transactional, MSF said.

“The claim that these agreements advance national ownership rings hollow when, at the same time, you have State Department officials openly telling countries that global health assistance is contingent on their willingness to strike a minerals deal with the US,” said Mihir Mankad, MPA, MBA, global health advocacy and policy director at MSF USA.