The World Health Organization in Geneva has faced criticism from President Trump over its handling of the pandemic.

The World Health Organization in Geneva has faced criticism from President Trump over its handling of the pandemic.

has sent a letter officially notifying the United Nations that it is leaving the World Health Organization, starting the formal process of withdrawal that President Trump first threatened in April when he halted funding to WHO.

of its withdrawal from the World Health Organization, effective on 6 July 2021," wrote Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesman for U.N.

"The World Health Organization will not disappear," said Jimmy Kolker, a former ambassador who was the chief health diplomat for the U.S.

In a statement, the American Medical Association said, "The Trump administration's official withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) puts the health of our country at grave risk.

But in a letter to Congress dated June 30, 750 experts in global health and international law said that "withdrawal will likely cost lives, American and foreign" to COVID-19 by cutting crucial funds to WHO's health emergencies program for testing, contact tracing and vaccine development, and prolonging the pandemic.

Leaving the organization "is actually a political gift to China," said Larry Gostin, director of the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, noting a potentially ironic turn of events as a result of the withdrawal

"The United States can cease all communications, can seek to throw up a wall between the United States and the rest of the world, and yet we've seen time and again that walls do not hold back diseases," said Benjamin Mason Meier, associate professor of global health policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "And our efforts to pretend otherwise are crippling the United States in this pandemic, and leading the United States to suffer unprecedented mortality far above any faced by high-income countries."