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President Donald Trump put into motion the withdrawal process to have the US removed from the Geneva-based organization after he signed an executive order on the first day of his second term.The US has officially withdrawn from the World Health Organization (WHO), a year after President Donald Trump announced he was putting an end to America's 78-year-old commitment to the health agency. Trump first made the decision to quit the United Nations health body in an executive order issued on his first day of office in 2025. He said the US was leaving the WHO due to the organization's mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic and other global health crises. The US was legally required to give a one-year-notice before the withdrawal. "Today, the United States withdrew from the World Health Organization (WHO), freeing itself from its constraints," said a joint statement from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, published Thursday. US owes millions to WHO Washington's split from WHO is messy. The departure required the United States to pay any outstanding legal obligations to the Geneva-based organization, which the country has not done for 2024 and 2025. WHO says Washington owes it over $130 million (€112 million). News agency Reuters cited a US State Department spokesperson as disputing the statute. "The ‌American people have paid ⁠more than enough," the spokesperson told Reuters in an email. The US has been the largest financial contributor to the WHO — contributing around 18% of its overall funding — mostly through voluntary payments to its preferred initiatives. The pull back triggered a financial crisis that has seen the WHO slash its management team in half and cut budgets across the board. On Thursday, Washington said it had ceased all US funding and staffing for WHO programs. "Going forward, US engagement with the WHO will be limited strictly to effectuate our withdrawal and to safeguard the health and safety of the American people," the statement from Rubio and Kennedy read. Experts worry about global health challenges Meanwhile, issues such as lost access to data that could give the US an early alert of a new pandemic have also not been worked out, US officials have acknowledged. Since last year, experts have warned that the US break from WHO will have a severe impact on the ability of both parties to address disease outbreaks and other global health concerns. "I hope the US will reconsider and rejoin WHO," the international agency's Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press briefing earlier this month. "Withdrawing from the WHO is a loss for the United States, and it's a ‌loss for the ⁠rest of the world." The WHO chief warned that the withdrawal "makes the US unsafe... and makes the rest of the world unsafe," adding that it was "not really the right decision". Edited by: Roshni Majumdar