The United States is set to officially withdraw from the World Health Organization on Thursday, one year after President Trump signed an executive order directing the exit. Trump signed the order on day 1 of his second term in office. According to Fox Business, the “country must provide one year’s notice and pay all outstanding fees before officially departing” under U.S. law. “The US is due to officially exit the World Health Organization on January 22, in the face of warnings it will hit both US health and global health and also in violation of a US law that requires Washington to pay the UN health agency $260 million in fees that it owes,” Reuters stated. The US is due to officially exit the World Health Organization on January 22, in the face of warnings it will hit both US health and global health and also in violation of a US law that requires Washington to pay the UN health agency $260 million in fees that it owes… — Reuters (@Reuters) January 22, 2026 Fox Business shared further: Member states are scheduled to discuss the U.S. departure and how it should be handled during the WHO’s executive board meeting in February, the outlet reported. WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recently urged the U.S. to reconsider its withdrawal, calling it a global loss. “I hope the U.S. will reconsider and rejoin WHO,” he said at a news conference earlier this month. “Withdrawing from the WHO is a lose for the United States, and it’s a lose for the rest of the world.” In May, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recorded a video message to the World Health Assembly, outlining why Trump opted to withdraw the U.S. from the WHO. “Like many legacy institutions, the WHO has become mired in bureaucratic bloat, entrenched paradigms, conflicts of interest and international power politics,” Kennedy said. Trump called the WHO a “corrupt” organization earlier this week. Check it out: .@POTUS on withdrawing from the corrupt World Health Organization: pic.twitter.com/kpZhcOlmcy — Department of State (@StateDept) January 21, 2026 There is uncertainty that the United States will pay the fees before making its exit from the organization official. STAT News explained: But President Trump’s disdain for the WHO — and his record of sometimes not paying bills — has left little doubt in the minds of global health observers that this condition of the 1948 joint resolution will go unmet. “There’s no chance that the U.S. is going to pay before it leaves,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor at Georgetown University and director of the WHO Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. Tom Bollyky, director of the global health program at the Council on Foreign Relations, said if anybody could block the United States’ withdrawal for failing to meet the conditions of the joint resolution, it would be Congress, not the member states of the WHO. Bollyky told STAT it was understandable that the WHO might study the issue of the unpaid bill to determine its options. “But that doesn’t seem like a winning argument to me,” he said. With little support for the WHO among Republicans — who control both the House and the Senate — there has been no push from Congress to hold the country to the provision set out by their forerunners. Monies for the assessed contributions — effectively a country’s WHO dues — traditionally have been paid by the State Department’s international agencies bureau. A department spokesperson said the U.S. has no intention of settling this outstanding debt. “The United States will not be making any payments to the WHO before our withdrawal on January 22, 2026. The cost [borne] 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 spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We will ensure that no more U.S. funds are routed to this organization.”