The US contributes around a fifth of the budget for the World Health Organization – its withdrawal from the public health body will impede efforts to control the global spread of diseases and could pu

The United States will leave the World Health Organization, President Donald Trump said on Monday, saying the global health agency had mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic and other international health crises.

WHO’s constitution, drafted in New York, doesn’t have a clear exit method for member states. A joint resolution by Congress in 1948 outlined that the U.S. can withdraw with one year's notice. This is contingent, however, on ensuring that its financial obligations to WHO “shall be met in full for the organization’s current fiscal year.”

One of President Trump’s first executive orders removes the U.S. from the global health organization, which experts say is “cataclysmic.”

President Donald Trump’s day one order withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization as he signed a flurry of new executive actions Monday night is a major hit to the nation’s public health system,