WHO World Health Statistics 2026: world off-track on all health SDGs — malaria up 8.5%, 22.1 million COVID-19 excess deaths, 1.6 billion in health-related poverty, life expectancy fell back to 2011 levels

The World Health Statistics (WHS) report is the WHO's annual flagship statistical compilation of health and health-related indicators. It has been published every year since 2005 and tracks progress against the global health agenda — first the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and now the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG-3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.

The 2026 edition, released on 13 May 2026, draws on data from 194 WHO Member States and covers indicators across infectious diseases, non-communicable diseases, maternal-child health, mental health, universal health coverage, health systems, environmental risks and mortality. The report's analytical method blends national reporting with WHO's own modelled estimates where reporting is incomplete — which is itself one of its key findings: too many countries have insufficient mortality and cause-of-death data.

Getting better (2010-2024):
- New HIV infections down 40% globally
- Tobacco use continued to decline globally; alcohol consumption also down since 2010
- NTD interventions needed dropped 36% — meaning fewer people at risk of diseases like lymphatic filariasis, trachoma, schistosomiasis
- Tuberculosis incidence continues a long-term decline

Getting worse / stalled:
- Malaria incidence up 8.5% since 2015 — reversing two decades of progress; driven by insecticide and drug resistance, climate-driven vector expansion, and COVID-era disruption of bed-net distribution
- Anaemia in women of reproductive age — prevalence rising globally
- Violence against women — remains alarmingly high, with limited progress
- Polluting cooking fuels — 2.0 billion people still use solid fuels (wood, dung, charcoal) in 2024 — a major driver of household air-pollution deaths, especially among women and children in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa

The COVID scar: Global life expectancy and Healthy Life Expectancy (HALE) fell back to 2011 levels in 2021, erasing nearly a decade of gains. Recovery since has been incomplete and uneven — high-income regions have largely recovered; lower-income regions lag.

Universal Health Coverage: About a quarter of the global population faces financial hardship due to out-of-pocket health spending; 1.6 billion people were pushed into or were living in poverty due to health expenses as of 2022.

COVID-19 mortality: WHO estimates the pandemic was linked to 22.1 million excess deaths globally between 2020 and 2023 — a figure that includes both deaths from COVID-19 itself and indirect deaths from disrupted health systems and delayed care for chronic conditions.

The report flags a mortality-data gap as a critical weakness in global health governance: only 18% of countries report mortality data to WHO within one year (end-2025), nearly one-third have never reported cause-of-death data, and only about a third meet WHO standards for high-quality mortality data.

WHO's prescription has three pillars:

1. Invest in robust CRVS (Civil Registration and Vital Statistics) systems: Universal registration of births and deaths, with improved medical certification of cause of death. CRVS is the foundation — without it, even basic mortality estimates are guesses.

2. Invest in digital health infrastructure: Interoperable platforms, secure data architecture, scalable digital tools — built in a way that preserves national data sovereignty (a deliberate nod to developing-country concerns about data flowing to Western analytics firms).

3. Adhere to global binding standards:
- WHO Nomenclature Regulations 1967 — the legal instrument under which member states commit to standardising death-cause classification.
- International Classification of Diseases (ICD) — currently ICD-11, adopted by the World Health Assembly in 2019 and in force since 2022. Integration of ICD-11 into national systems is uneven; the report urges acceleration.

Best-practice case: WHO cites Morocco as a country that has transitioned from a centralised to a decentralised digital cause-of-death reporting platform — a model for other middle-income countries.