WHO warns of slowing global health gains in new statistics report

The WHO’s 2025 report reveals that the COVID-19 pandemic caused a historic reversal in global health, dropping life expectancy and erasing years of progress regarding healthy years of life. While there have been gains in healthier living conditions through improved sanitation and reduced tobacco use, these are overshadowed by stalled progress in essential health service coverage and rising premature deaths from noncommunicable diseases. This mixed landscape highlights significant gaps in access and investment, particularly for women and girls, warning that without urgent action, the world risks losing the chance to meet critical mortality reduction targets by 2030. The stagnation in maternal and child health outcomes underscores the critical need for stronger primary healthcare systems and sufficient medical personnel. Chronic diseases now account for the majority of deaths among those under seventy, driven by aging populations and lifestyle factors, while infectious disease control faces new challenges such as resurging malaria and antimicrobial resistance. These trends indicate that current strategies are insufficient to address the complex, interconnected threats to global well-being, necessitating sustained and predictable financing to protect hard-won gains. This report is vital to the open data community as it exemplifies the necessity of timely, trusted, and standardized health information for effective policymaking. By highlighting the WHO’s support for strengthening health information systems through the SCORE strategy and the World Health Data Hub, the article emphasizes how unlocking the value of data across countries can drive better decisions. It serves as a call to action for the open data field to contribute to improving data accuracy and accessibility, ensuring that health information systems can support the rapid, measurable improvements needed to reverse negative health trends globally.

Source: who.int
Published on 2025-05-16

WHO warns of slowing global health gains in new statistics report

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