The World Health Organization (WHO) has said the COVID-19 pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in global health systems and was linked to an estimated 22.1 million excess deaths, including indirect deaths, between 2020 and 2023.
The estimate, published in the WHO’s flagship World Health Statistics report, is more than three times the number of officially reported COVID-19 deaths and reflects the scale of the pandemic’s global impact. The report said the pandemic reversed a decade of gains in life expectancy, with recovery remaining incomplete and uneven across regions.
The report also highlighted notable progress in several areas. New HIV infections fell by 40% between 2010 and 2024, while both tobacco use and alcohol consumption declined during the same period. The number of people requiring interventions for neglected tropical diseases dropped by 36% between 2010 and 2024.
Access to services shaping health outcomes also expanded rapidly between 2015 and 2024. During this period, 961 million people gained access to safely managed drinking water, 1.2 billion to sanitation, 1.6 billion to basic hygiene and 1.4 billion to clean cooking solutions.
The report said the WHO African Region achieved faster-than-global reductions in HIV infections, down by 70%, and tuberculosis, down by 28%. It added that the South-East Asia Region was on track to meet its 2025 milestone for malaria reduction.
However, the report warned that significant challenges remain. Malaria incidence increased by 8.5% since 2015, moving the world further away from global targets, while progress remained uneven across regions.
Anaemia affects 30.7% of women of reproductive age, with no improvement recorded over the past decade. The prevalence of overweight children under the age of five reached 5.5% in 2024.
The report also noted that violence against women remains widespread, with intimate partner violence affecting one in four women globally. It said these persistent risks underscored the need for stronger prevention and social protection policies.
“These data tell a story of both progress and persistent inequality, with many people, especially women, children and those in underserved communities, still denied the basic conditions for a healthy life,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a statement issued by the WHO.
“The world is falling short on health targets, with progress uneven, slowing, and in some areas reversing,” the report said, while noting that progress towards universal health coverage (UHC) had slowed sharply.
The global UHC service coverage index rose only marginally from 68 to 71 between 2015 and 2023. One quarter of the world’s population faced financial hardship because of health costs, while 1.6 billion people were living in or pushed into poverty due to out-of-pocket health expenditure in 2022.
The report added that childhood vaccination coverage remained below target, with immunity gaps contributing to outbreaks.
Although global maternal mortality has fallen by 40% since 2000, it remains nearly three times higher than the 2030 target. Under-five mortality has declined by 51%, but many countries remain off track. Progress in reducing premature deaths from non-communicable diseases has also slowed significantly since 2015.
The WHO said many drivers of ill health, including nutritional, behavioural and environmental risks, were not improving fast enough. Air pollution contributed to an estimated 6.6 million deaths worldwide in 2021, while inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene contributed to 1.4 million deaths in 2019.
“These trends reflect too many deaths that could have been avoided,” Yukiko Nakatani said.
“With rising environmental risks, health emergencies, and a worsening health financing crisis, we must act urgently, strengthening primary health care, investing in prevention, and securing sustainable financing to build resilient health systems and get back on track,” Ms. Nakatani said.
The report also highlighted major gaps in global health data collection. As of the end of 2025, only 18% of countries were reporting mortality data to the WHO within one year, while nearly one-third had never reported cause-of-death data.
Only one-third of countries meet WHO standards for high-quality mortality data, while about half have low or very low-quality data, or none at all.
Of the estimated 61 million deaths globally in 2023, only about one-third were reported with cause-of-death information, and only about one-fifth had meaningful International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-coded data, the report said.
“Data gaps severely limit the ability to monitor real-time health trends, compare outcomes across countries, and design effective public health responses,” the WHO said.
Published – May 14, 2026 03:09 pm IST