The World Health Organization (WHO) just published the Health Statistics 2025.
World health statistics is the world’s annual health report card. This year’s edition highlights the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which reversed many of the gains made in the previous two decades. Between 2000 and 2019, healthy life expectancy rose by more than five years, maternal mortality fell by one third, child mortality more than halved and premature deaths fell –driven by political commitment, investment, innovation and stronger health systems.
In 2020 and 2021, COVID-19 killed millions of people, put health systems under severe strain and wiped 1.8 years off healthy life expectancy.
This report also shows that at the current pace, the world will miss the target in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to reduce premature deaths from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) by one third. While mortality rates have declined, the number of premature NCD deaths continues to rise, due to population growth and ageing.
Hypertension and diabetes remain inadequately controlled, and air pollution continues to claim millions of lives globally. Likewise, progress on maternal and child mortality has slowed considerably, and many countries are off- course for the 2030 targets, due to underfunding of primary health care and huge gaps in access to essential services, such as skilled care at birth, immunization and access to health workers. Domestic investment must increase, particularly because where the need is greatest, resources are most limited
More info and to download the paper: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240110496
