WHO: Donald Trump starts official US withdrawal from UN health body

The US President has followed through on threats to leave the UN’s health body over its coronavirus response, formally beginning the withdrawal.

President Donald Trump has formally started the withdrawal of the United States from the World Health Organization, making good on threats over the UN body’s response to the coronavirus, officials said Tuesday.

The United States is the largest financial contributor to the WHO — which leads the fight on global maladies from polio to measles to mental health — but it has increasingly been in Mr Trump’s crosshairs as the coronavirus takes a heavy toll.

After threatening to suspend the $400 million in annual US contributions and then announcing a withdrawal, Mr Trump has formally informed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that he has started the US pullout, a State Department spokesperson said.

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US President Donald Trump has formally begun the process to pull out of the WHO. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

The withdrawal is effective in one year — July 6, 2021 — and Joe Biden, Mr Trump’s presumptive Democratic opponent, is virtually certain to stop it and stay in the WHO if he defeats Trump in the November election.

Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman for the secretary-general, confirmed that the United States gave its notice.

Under conditions set when the United States entered the World Health Organization in 1948, Washington has to give a one-year notice to pull out — and meet its remaining assessed financial obligations, Mr Dujarric said.

“To call Trump’s response to COVID chaotic and incoherent doesn’t do it justice,” said Senator Robert Menendez, the top democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, who said that Congress was notified.

“This won’t protect American lives or interests -- it leaves Americans sick & America alone.”

The US is the largest financial contributor to the World Health Organization. Picture: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP

Mr Trump has accused the World Health Organization of bias toward China, saying it ignored early signs of human-to-human transmission of the deadly virus.

While many public health advocates share some criticism of the WHO, they question what other powers the world body had other than to work with China, where COVID-19 was first detected late last year.

Critics say Mr Trump is seeking to deflect criticism from his own handling of the pandemic in the United States, which has suffered by far the highest death toll of any nation.