The world is falling short of—and even reversing—its health targets, WHO warns
Malaria incidence is increasing, progress on maternal mortality is stalling, and some childhood vaccine rates are plateauing or have dipped below the threshold for herd immunity
Photo by Robert Hradil/Getty Images
Global progress on health is falling short, slowing and even reversing, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) 2026 World Health Statistics report. The annual check-in on progress toward the United Nations’ health goals for 2030 should be “sobering,” said Yukiko Nakatani, the WHO’s assistant director-general for health systems, at a press conference on Wednesday.
Malaria incidence has increased, measles coverage remains below the threshold needed to prevent outbreaks, and maternal and child mortality decline is slowing, the report found. Excess COVID mortality between 2020 and 2023 is also far higher than official death counts suggested, according to the WHO. “We estimate approximately 22 million excess deaths globally during this period,” said Alain Labrique, the WHO’s director of digital health and innovation, at the same press conference.
The COVID pandemic completely erased nearly a decade of global gains in life expectancy and health life expectancy between 2019 and 2021, he said; these measures have somewhat rebounded, but progress has been uneven.
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Importantly, the 2026 report includes data up to 2024, so the effect of U.S. funding cuts to foreign aid and world health initiatives, and the Trump administration’s decision to pull the U.S. from the WHO aren’t captured, said Labrique. However, he said “it’s quite likely that, should these trends continue, and we don’t see reinvigorated investment in global health, that this will have an effect on global health indicators, and … that it may continue to cause a reversal in the patterns that we worked so hard to gain.”
There are some positive points: alcohol and tobacco consumption decreased, continuing a downward trend since 2010. New HIV infections have fallen by 40 percent since 2010, and rates of neglected tropical diseases—a group of 21 infections such as dengue fever or leprosy—also fell.
WHO officials stressed that the data are incomplete. Some countries don’t report data as frequently or completely as others, and funding cuts also endanger data collection. Cuts to foreign health aid in the wake of the pandemic, too, have also disrupted surveillance systems, said Nakatani.
The report comes just days before the World Health Assembly, the annual meeting of the WHO’s decision-making body that sets the organization’s priorities and policies for the coming year.
“We need stronger health systems, sustained investment and better quality of data,” Nakatani said. “The report is an urgent reminder for member states and all health partners together, we must refocus efforts, safeguard hard won gains and renew progress.”
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