UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : WHO Press conference: World Health Statistics 2025

Hello everybody.

Thanks very much for joining us for this really important World Health Statistics launch.

This is the state of the world's Global Health 2025.

I have with me today Doctor Samira Asma, our Assistant Director General for data delivery and delivery of impact.

And we, I also have with me the team lead Doctor Haidong Wang.

You're the acting director currently for the, for the department, yes, of, of data and analytics.

Dr Samira Asma will begin with some remarks giving you the overview of what's in the World Health statistics, and then Dr Wang will give you more detail.

I also have Doctor Bo Bo Cheng Chow, who is a lead statistician and did much of the work on this project, and also Doctor Ahmad Hosseinpour, who will answer any questions that you may have on HealthEquity monitoring.

So without further ado, I'll hand over and to let you know, we will provide the links to this.

We will also provide the press release.

Now the press release has had a little update.

We did give you a copy of the embargo press release yesterday, but it's been updated a little.

We've also got links to the country data, so please make sure you look at the one and that comes out at 3:00.

But without further ado, I'll hand over to Doctor Asthma.

Thank you very much, Margaret.

Good afternoon, everyone.

And first of all, thank you so much for joining us today.

And a special welcome to all the media colleagues.

And I must say that we truly and sincerely appreciate your time and the role in reporting the facts that shape public understanding and attention to global health.

Today, WHO is releasing the 2025 World Health Statistics Report Card, our annual health check up, and the clearest, most comparable snapshot of how people's health is improving or falling behind around the world.

Here's the bottom line the world is failing its health checkup, but countries have shown that rapid progress is possible when there is political commitment, smart investments and systems built to deliver results.

Global life expectancy dropped by 1.8 years between 2019 and 2021, the sharpest decline in recent decades, reversing a decade of progress.

The new results show impact of the pandemic goes beyond just direct loss of lives and shortened life expectancy.

During the same.

Anxiety and depression linked to the pandemic reduced healthy life expectancy by 6 weeks.

Between 2000 and 2023, maternal deaths declined by over 40% and child deaths underage 5 dropped by more than half.

This, indeed is a powerful reminder of what's possible when countries invest in women and Children's Health.

But progress has stalled.

Now in several countries, maternal deaths remain unacceptably high and essential services are at risk.

Without urgent action, the world could lose the chance to prevent 700,000 maternal and eight million child deaths by 2030.

Non communicable diseases now account for 50% of all premature deaths under age 70.

The world is off track to reduce premature NCD mortality by 1/3, a target we cannot afford to miss again.

Amid the challenges, there are signs of progress.

By the end of 2024, an estimated 1.4 billion people were living healthier lives, driven by declines in tobacco use, alcohol consumption, improved air quality, and better access to water, sanitation and hygiene.

These gains show when countries and partners act together, healthier lives follow.

The global health ecosystem is shifting.

Countries are under pressure from rising risks, tighter budgets and growing demands.

In this environment, data and evidence matter more than ever to focus efforts, guide decisions and deliver results.

Stronger data systems are not optional.

They are the foundation of smarter policies, better programmes and real accountability.

As the World Health leaders gather next week for the World Health Assembly here in Geneva, we have a timely opportunity to act together with countries and partners.

WHO is recommitting to the 567 billion targets for 2025 and 20 to 2028.

And these are 5 billion people with access to affordable services, 6 billion living healthier lives, and 7 billion better protected from health emergencies, including through the new pandemic agreement.

These targets surely are bold but achievable if we align around priorities, invest sustainably, and hold each other accountable for results.

This is a pivotal moment, and we count on you, our partners in the media, to help spotlight these realities.

Ask us the hard questions and keep health high on the global agenda.

Now I'll turn to Doctor Haidong Wong, WH OS Director for Data and Analytics and the lead author of the report to take us through the key findings.

[Other language spoken]

Dear colleagues, I want to provide some key findings in this year's World Health Statistical Report using the slides, using a presentation.

So I want to acknowledge that this is AWHO wide endeavour as this report provides A comprehensive summary of the health statistics across technical programmes at WHO.

This data are vital to understand the trends, set policies and the direct resources to where they will have the greatest benefit.

From 2000 to 2019, global healthy life, healthy life expectancy or hail at birth rose by 5.4 years from 58.1 year to 63.5 years.

This improvement was largely driven by reduced mortality from communicable, maternal, perinatal and the nutritional conditions in children under 5 and from non communicable disease in individuals aged 30 and above.

However, increased mobility due to diabetes in those ages 30 and older resulted in a .14 year reduction in healthy life expectancy.

Each WHO region reflected different patterns shaped by their specific health challenges, demographic and epidemiological profiles.

Between 2019 and the 2021, nearly all global health loss were attributable to increase the mortality linked directly or indirectly to COVID-19 pandemic among people ages 30 and older.

The pandemic also led to significant mental health burdens.

Anxiety and the depressive disorders each contributed to a point O six years decrease in global healthy life expectancy.

Combined, these mental health impacts erased 80% of the .15 year health game made from declining NCD mortality during the same time period.

There have been notable achievements since 2010, including reductions in HIV and the tuberculosis incidence and the decline in the number of people needing treatment for neglected tropical disease.

Malaria incidence has risen since 2015 and the hepatitis B along with antimicrobial resistance remain persistent and a growing public health threat.

The world remains off track to meet the most global target related to reducing health risk factors.

Despite some improvement challenges, persistent persist in addressing malnutrition, tobacco use, unsafe water and sanitation and hygiene, air pollution, and violence against women and girls.

Over the past two decades, there has been measurable global progress in Universal House Coverage Service Coverage Index improvement.

However, recent years have seen a notable slowdown in this progress.

In 2019, 344 million people were punished, were pushed or further pushed into extreme poverty due to out of pocket health spending.

Additionally, 313.5% of the global population spend more than 10% of their household budget on out of pocket payment for health.

Inequality in childhood immunisation coverage related to household economic status and the maternal education remain significant within countries.

Encouragingly, over the past decade, these inequality have lessened in low and the lower middle income countries compared to the prior decade.

Economic related disparity in DTP 3 vaccine coverage and the 0 dose prevalence have dropped by over 50% in low income countries.

Eliminating economic related immunisation inequality across 88 low and middle income countries could raise the national average DTP coverage by 10% points and reduce 0 dose prevalence by half.

Progress towards the triple meaning targets for WH O's general Programme work 13 remain uneven and in some areas, insufficient.

In terms of universal House coverage billing, only around 431 million additional people are expected to gain access to essential health services without incurring financial hardship by 2024.

Approximately 637,000,000 more people are better protected from House emergencies by 2024.

On a more positive note, 1.4 billion additional people are projected to enjoy healthier lives by 2024.

Despite these gains, overall progress is still not sufficient to meet the House related Sustainable Development Goals by 20-30.

Recent disruptions in international aid threatened to derail essential health service and the systems, particularly in countries and the communities with the greatest health care needs.

Protecting and the building on the gains made, made under the triple winning targets must remain a priority for the global community.

This concludes my presentation.

Now over to you, Margaret.

Thank you very much, Doctor Wang.

[Other language spoken]

As always, we'll start with questions in the room.

And could I ask, because I know who you are, but my colleagues don't, could you please state your full name and your agency or which particular outlet you're going to write for?

[Other language spoken]

No, no questions in the room.

[Other language spoken]

Boris Engelsan, a local freelancer.

In rich countries like Switzerland, the health system is on the verge of collapse and this is rarely alluded to in the kind of narrative you have presented.

So probably the health system in the north, supporting the health system in the north is not part of the mandate of the WHOI don't know by heart your bylaws, but it is still a fact that we always introduce our system as a model to the South and our system is collapsing.

So what is your reaction to that?

I think that's more a health system question rather than a statistics question.

But maybe Doctor Asbury, you'd like to begin.

Health systems truly are the foundation for giving population the right to optimum health.

And unfortunately, we are seeing that the priorities are shifting from health to other priorities as we are seeing not only here perhaps, but also in many countries.

And that is why I think it's facts that are presented hopefully will again spark attention back to what matters most.

And a regenerative economy and investing in human capital is so important for any country and global population.

Maybe my question was not very clear.

In a country like Switzerland, there is no lack of political will and no lack of funding.

There are some issues, but I mean it's not the number one problem.

The problem is that the the system is collapsing under its own weight.

So when you say where there is political will and where there will be more investment, there will be step forwards.

Are you sure that we are going to buy, I mean the whole world will buy this narrative.

[Other language spoken]

But I think that really is a question about how you run a health system.

And I would want to point out the question that you asked about whether we collect statistics and we only when you say North and South, I think what you mean S you mean resource poor countries, because I come from the South and we collect anyway the we collect statistics from every all around the world.

It's got nothing to do with what the level of resources in your country are.

But I think it, that is what you're talking about is more how a health system works, which is not really related to the subject matter of this report.

But I have workshop on that.

We will definitely, I think we'll go now to the platform.

[Other language spoken]

Yes, good afternoon.

John's Eric Costasa with France 24 and The Lancet.

I was wondering if in your data set, I gather your cut off point was 2021, even though you sprinkle it with some additional data for 2022-2023.

But I was interesting from your data sets, the number of people that fell into poverty, I think 344 million because of out of pocket contributions for their health.

Can you give us a bird's eye view where in which regions of the world or which countries this was most severe?

And secondly, what are the data showing for the phenomenal failure in universal health coverage being off target right now, nearly 60% by the end of the year, 50%, which was also the global gold standard for The Who.

[Other language spoken]

I think that's one for Doctor Wong.

[Other language spoken]

So regarding our first, I guess not a question, but a comment on the different reference years throughout this report.

So 2021 is a reference year for the current estimate for Global House estimates GHE, so which covers both mortality and mobility for the Member States.

So that covers years up to 2021 and a lot of House related SDGS and the triple billion targets assessment, the progress assessment in this report covers up to year 2022-2023.

And in the case of triple billion progress, we cover it up to 2024 as well.

Of course with forecast for specific tracer indicators for the UHC metric you you mentioned especially you know the people in that have incurred financial hardship, 344 million number you quoted that's for 2019.

That's, that's from come from the most recent assessment of the universal health coverage global monitoring report.

We're currently working on the global monitoring report of 2023 which will cover the financial hardship estimates up to calendar year 2022.

And regarding you know the the regional disparities certainly that is exists for both the service coverage index SDG 3 point 8.1 and the financial hardship 3 point 8.2.

We can share with you more detailed information regarding the regional distribution of the three, four, 344 million numbers as well for reference.

[Other language spoken]

What I was interested in some specific examples where it's most severe in low income countries or middle income where you see this, the number of people falling into poverty.

This is tracked closely by the World Bank as well, not only The Who.

Yes, on that matter, we can certainly get back to you later this afternoon with country and the regional distribution and the force, the STD 3 point 8.2, the financial hardship index.

We work with World Bank on this index as well.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much, Doctor Wong.

Now I've got I'll go to the platform.

I've got Isabel Sacco from FA Isabel, please unmute yourself and ask your question.

[Other language spoken]

I say you said I work for a Fed Spanish news agency and I have three separate questions and maybe I would be very grateful if you can answer the three, the three in clearly separate way.

The first one is on the impact of COVID in, in the, in, in the, in lowering this the life expectancy.

I would like to know if you can be more precise on how I understand, I mean in morbidity, but how, how do you relate exactly the the pandemic to the life expectancy if you?

I mean, if we have, we want to have an idea of what has occurred in the last years.

I understand that you don't have, you cannot be, you cannot give a statements on what happened after 2022.

But we do we have any idea of what what is the trend after Kovid, after the after the pandemic?

Certainly I understand that.

I would like to know how much of the gains in life expectancy are where in developing countries and in that extent what will be our what do you consider could be the, the impact of the of cuts or in international aid, especially for health programmes in, in the context of the issue that we are treating of course and well, in fact these are two it's OK for me.

[Other language spoken]

Just to clarify, when you say developing countries, you mean low income countries, low middle income countries?

Because that's the definition we use.

We tend not to use terms like developing because they don't give us an idea of what.

[Other language spoken]

But then I mean, exactly, not the middle income country, but especially low middle, low, low middle income income countries.

[Other language spoken]

I think this is Doctor Haidong.

[Other language spoken]

Yeah, I can start then hand off to Pochen to give more details regarding the COVID-19 impact.

[Other language spoken]

So far, the current estimates of impact of COVID-19 on mortality and mobility or more specifically housing life expectancy is up to year 2021.

But we are currently working on analysing and estimating the impact of COVID-19 up to year 2023.

And at the same time, we were also extending the global health estimates up to the same reference year, which is 2023 as well.

We are expecting to start the country consultation for this estimates in the summer and finalise the estimates in by early fall.

So there we'll have a more holistic picture of the exact toll of COVID-19 on mortality and mobility between 2020 and 2023 regarding, you know, how much again in healthy life expectancy in the low and middle income countries.

I'll hand this off to to BOTCH and we have the assessment at The Who regional level, but certainly those estimates are available at the country level that if you're interested, we're happy to share Botching over to you on both.

[Other language spoken]

I don't and thanks for your question.

[Other language spoken]

And for our assessment, as I don't mentioned, it's only up to 2021 for the moment.

We'll be updating the assessment up to 2023 in the coming month.

So for our current assessment, we look at not only mortality but also morbidity and those display different patterns across different WHO regions and income groups.

So for the impact of COVID in low income countries up to 2021, the impact is actually not as big as compared with the high income countries.

For example, the impact of COVID and direct COVID deaths and also indirect deaths related to COVID are doesn't really have a big impact on life expectancy and healthy life expectancy.

And an extreme example is for countries in The Who Western Pacific regions.

The impact as you can see in the report is really minimal from the COVID-19 and other pandemic related causes.

But as we also shown in the report on the morbidity side, although the impact of causes like anxiety and depression, they don't produce a huge impact on the life expectancy and healthy life expectancy.

But across all The Who regions and all the income groups, you would see there is some impact.

And in relative terms that impact from anxiety and depression related to morbidity would even outweigh the the impact of rising the impact of declining mortality from NCD cell command.

So I think that's an interesting pattern we're seeing.

So I think the bottom line is we are seeing that worse trends across geographic locations and the income groups and depending on what else specifically looking at the different epidemiology profiles and demographic age structures in each region would have affected the overall income related to the pandemic as well.

So for a closer look at those results, we'll be happy to providing you more in depth results by income groups or at at national levels.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much for that comprehensive answers, Bochen, and thank you, Doctor.

Doctor Wang, We've got another question from Laurence Ciero from Swiss News.

[Other language spoken]

Actually I had pretty much a similar question in terms of methodology as the one that was raised by Isabel.

[Other language spoken]

So now we have the, we had already the figure last year till 2021 of that reduction of health, longevity, life expectancy.

So based on the other statistics that you have until 2023 and the general analysis you could draw till 2025 on determinants of health.

Can you already say that it will take much longer to regain what was lost in two years and probably in three years till the end of 2022 that that it took to to be lost in terms of life expense expectancy in the different countries?

[Other language spoken]

Very good question.

Would you like to start with that Doctor Asma or should we start with Doctor Wong?

[Other language spoken]

So as as you have pointed out some of the major house related indicators in our report, we have either data or estimates up to 2022-2023 beyond the pandemic and certainly we have forecasting method as well.

But keep in mind that many of those house related indicators, for example, for the UHC Universal House coverage Service coverage index, you know, met need for family planning or certain indicators like hypertension control rate or smoking problems.

Those indicator, even if there is a impact from the pandemic itself on it, it's going to have a, it will take a longer time to to see the impact.

And some indicator really based on the empirical data we have seen so far really is not affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

So using those house related indicator as the covers to predict, you know, what is the level and try and how soon do we cover would be on the, you know, mortality on the loss in life expectancy or healthy life expectancy.

It's not something we're working on right now, but rather we're trying to gather all the empirical data available from vital registration system, sample registration system surveys and the censuses to make sure that we have a robust estimates of what the overall all cost mortality level is during the pandemic year of 2022 and 2023.

And certainly use a similar strong information to assess the excess mortality due to COVID-19 for the same time period, same time period as well.

And we're we're we're very happy to provide you with update later this year once we have the whole picture in place.

[Other language spoken]

I'm just looking around to see any, any additions?

No, we're good there.

[Other language spoken]

John's got another one in the room.

[Other language spoken]

I didn't want to hug the floor.

I was wondering what you just mentioned Sir, concerning the data sets.

How much is a of your data sets is what's the breakdown roughly of between surveys, census and epidemiologic, epidemiological data, what is roughly the mix?

And I've got a follow up question on another item.

Thanks one for you, Doctor Chow.

I can certainly touch on this before I hand over to Haidong.

So I think that that really depends on the indicator for mortality related indicators that we're using to assess life expectancy and healthy life expectancy.

Around 90 countries we have national veto registration data.

And for the remaining countries, we're drawing estimates from household surveys, from censuses, from something vital registration systems as well as sibling history data.

But that also depends on cause of deaths, specific cause of deaths as well.

So we don't really have a universal answers for all these specific cause of death.

And beyond mortality related indicators, I think the other indicators are would have a more diverse composition of the data sources.

It really comes down to which indicators we are talking about and we will be happy to provide you the the input, the information on the input data later.

[Other language spoken]

Yeah, that's very helpful.

[Other language spoken]

I also had Doctor Asmus got an ad for you.

Thank you, John, for that question.

And it is very important about the sources of data and the timeliness and the reliability of the sources of data.

I just want us to draw to a report of 2018, the first ever assessment WHO undertook on countries health information systems are truly an X-ray of how countries are faring with their surveillance systems, with their civil registration and vital statistics and their routine health information systems including facilities etcetera.

In 2018, what we saw was that 4 out of 10 deaths were reported globally or registered at a global level.

9 out of 10 deaths were not registered in Africa.

And as Bochen already highlighted that 70 countries have good vital registration and good cause of death.

And so the question is what about the other remaining countries?

This year we will be launching the second assessment.

And I think we are hoping, and I think the preliminary data that I looked at that countries have made a progress in, in this, in CRVS as well as due to the response to the pandemic, many of the routine information systems have improved.

But recently, again, coming back to Isabel's earlier question about the impact of international aid, for example, demographic and health surveys that were funded by US aid has abruptly stopped.

And what we have learnt is over 40 years, 400 surveys in 40 low and middle income countries have come to different paces of halt.

And what WHO and partners are looking at along with countries is what can we learn from this?

Where country LED surveillance systems, country LED health information systems that are sustainable while we are making these systems relevant to country needs, but also facilitate cross country comparability.

So the improvements of health information systems I think is a long road, but I think with innovative and digital technology solutions, I think we will see some rapid gains.

So stay tuned for the next report on the health information systems status.

But thank you so much for underscoring the the question around different data sources and country capabilities.

[Other language spoken]

Final question, I was wondering you've got a chapter on vaccine equity.

Do you have any data on equity with reference to access to therapeutics and diagnostics in the case of therapeutics being far costlier than vaccines?

[Other language spoken]

That's one for Ahmed.

I'm very glad he came along.

That's his chapter.

Thanks very much for the question.

On this particular indicator at WHO, we don't have the global data sets, but recently, like last year, we actually developed a database, Health Inequality Data repository, which is the largest collection of disaggregated data on health and health determinants.

And that covers over 2000 health indicators disaggregated by up to 22 dimensions of inequality like economic status, education, sex, age, place of residence, ethnicity, et cetera.

And the aim is that we try to maintain the repository and also expand it to add more indicators wherever data is available.

Of course, one of the main challenges that we are facing with that is that for the global database, what matters is the comparability of data.

And that's one of the main challenges that we face sort of more significantly when we want to look at within country inequality rather than national averages, because not lots of that data are publicly available as actually rightly ask about the distribution of data sources.

It's even more important for monitoring inequalities within countries because for that we're required to have sort of two data streams, 1 is on health and the other is on inequality dimensions like age and sex.

And in many countries, having these two, the two data streams together is not an easy task.

So in many low and middle income countries, we really rely on international household surveys or household surveys as the main source of monitoring inequality within countries.

So that's again as what Doctor Asma mentioned about the challenges that we're facing with the loss of international aid actually has more effect on monitoring inequalities within countries, especially in low and middle income countries.

Thank you, Boris.

You've got one more question indeed.

And I don't question to the former one, maybe I haven't listened very well, but some days back WHO issued a report on social determinant for health.

So is there, was it, uh, some kind of, uh, uh, let's say, uh, extraterrestrial report or does it have any relation with to this statistics?

And to the previous question, Yes.

Last week WHO published a global report on social determinants of HealthEquity.

And the 1st chapter of the report actually have evidence on how globally we actually progressed on the Commission on Social determinants of Health's targets that was set up in 2008.

And we provided information about how basically inequality in under 5 mortality in maternal health and in adult mortality has changed and how much gap is still we need to to cover to be able to just reach that point.

[Other language spoken]

So that was basically some information related to social determinants of HealthEquity.

And as that report actually says, normally the way to deal with HealthEquity has two major parts.

1 is to health system itself.

So basically we need to provide interventions and access to health services equitably to all the population.

But another broad factors are actually the social determinants, the determinants that are beyond health system and are covered in other parts of the society and government like economic, like education, like occupation.

So one of the main recommendation is actually doing inter sectoral collaboration between different parts of ministries and different parts of the government and ministries to make sure that we can tackle health inequalities.

Thank you very much.

I'm looking around the room.

I can't see any more questions and I don't see any more questions on the platform.

So I think now is the moment to ask Doctor Asma to make some final remarks.

[Other language spoken]

I'm hearing strongly that COVID-19 hurt our hearts and minds as much as our bodies or even more so.

But over to you, Doctor Asma.

First of all, thank you very much for joining us today and asking questions and also suggesting ideas on how we can make the next next reports much more user friendly.

I think the bottom line as I mentioned is that we are failing, but we have an opportunity to get back on track and accelerate progress at many fronts given the ecosystem around us.

What we are seeing is financing is shrinking.

So I think looking at innovative financing mechanisms and sustainable financing and also one of the link to social determinants as was mentioned is we have not really tapped the potential of taxation and the revenues by taxing harmful products such as cigarettes and alcohol, sweet and sugared beverages and junk food.

That is a good source of win, win for the public, for the policy makers, especially at this time of financial constriction.

But also again, the other innovative financing mechanisms, mainly payments on results.

That's why importance of data is so important and setting targets and following the outcomes and setting the priorities that have the most impact and the solutions and policies that are available.

I think that is the pathway to overcome the dip that we have seen and to come out of this crisis.

[Other language spoken]

And I think WHO, along with Member States and other partners, will continue to move forward on its mission.

So I just thank you very much and appreciate you keeping the health agenda in the public forums.

So thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Doctor Asma, Dr Wang, Dr Doctor Chow and Doctor Hossein PO.

And thank you very much members of the press.

I know this is a meaty subject, but basically, as Doctor Asma said, the numbers tell us not only where we are, but what we can achieve.

And we will be sending out the, the copies of this said the press release will come out in 15 minutes.

It's everything here is embargoed to Oh no, this is not embargoed.

This press conference is not embargoed.

But the materials come out at 1500.

And please use the updated press release because that's the one with the links to all the extra materials.

And also it's got one updated paragraph.

And I think that's it.

With that, with that, I'll say goodbye.

WHO Press conference: World Health Statistics 2025 - 15 May 2025