WHO 2023 Results Report Shows Significant Health Achievements and Calls for Joint Work Towards Sustainable Development Goals

World Health Organization (WHO) 2023 Results Reportthe most comprehensive to date, it charts the achievements of key milestones in public health, even amid greater global humanitarian health needs driven by conflict, climate change and disease outbreaks.

The report was published earlier Seventy-seventh World Health Assembly 2024. which runs from 27 May to 1 June 2024. WHO's revised program budget for 2022–2023 was USD 6726.1 million, including lessons learned from the pandemic response and addressing new health priorities.

With 96% of WHO country offices reporting on achievements for 174 countries, the report shows progress towards 46 targets and highlights challenges.

Triple billion targets

“The world is off track to achieve most of the three billion health-related Sustainable Development Goals and targets,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “However, with concrete and concerted action to accelerate progress, we could still achieve a significant subset of them. Our goal is to invest even more resources where they matter most – at the country level – while ensuring sustainable and flexible funding to support our mission.”

The report shows progress in several key areas, including healthier populations, universal health coverage (UHC) and protection in health emergencies.

In relation to a healthier population, the current trajectory indicates that the goal of 1 billion more people enjoying better health and well-being is likely to be met by 2025, driven primarily by improvements in air quality and access to water, sanitation and hygiene measures.

Regarding UHC, 30% of countries are making progress in covering basic health services and providing financial protection. This is mainly due to increased coverage of HIV services.

In terms of emergency protection, although vaccination coverage for high-priority pathogens shows improvement in 2020–2021 pandemic-related disorders, it has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels.

The Pandemic Fund's first disbursements totaled US$338 million in 2023, supporting 37 countries to finance the initial response to acute events and scale up life-saving health operations in protracted crises. WHO continues to work with countries and partners to improve genomic sequencing capacity and strengthen laboratories and surveillance systems worldwide with a 62% increase in capacity for SARS-CoV-2 between February 2021 and December 2023.

Highlights

The world's first malaria vaccine, RTS,S/AS01, was administered to more than two million children in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi over a two-year period, reducing mortality by 13% among children eligible for vaccination. WHO's prequalification of another vaccine, R21/Matrix-M, is expected to further boost malaria control efforts.

Elsewhere, 14 countries have eliminated at least one neglected tropical disease by 2022-2023. Bangladesh was eliminated on the 2nd.

The first all-oral treatment regimens for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis are available in 2022, allowing the largest number of people with tuberculosis to receive treatment since follow-up began nearly 30 years ago.

Thanks to WHO's REPLACE initiative, which aims to eliminate industrially produced trans-fatty acids from the food supply, an additional 13 countries have implemented best practice policies, bringing the total to 53 countries.

More than 75% of people living with HIV receive antiretroviral therapy, and most achieve viral suppression — meaning they cannot infect others. WHO guidance and support have helped countries like Botswana make significant progress in controlling HIV transmission.

Tobacco use is declining in 150 countries, 56 of which are on track to meet the global goal of reducing tobacco use by 2025.

An additional 29 countries developed multisectoral national action plans on antimicrobial resistance during the biennium 2022-2023, bringing the total to 178 countries.

Following the Director-General's call to eliminate cervical cancer, 25 more countries have introduced the human papillomavirus vaccine, bringing the total number of countries that have introduced the vaccine to 58 since WHO launched the initiative in 2020.

The way forward

The report acknowledges the significant disparities in health outcomes, disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and that ongoing health workforce shortages require investments in education and employment.

Looking ahead, WHO's program budget for 2024–2025 aims to balance investment in the Organization's normative functions with the need to strengthen country offices. It aims to fund 80% of the planned budget for high priority items, accelerating progress towards meeting the three billion GPW targets 13 (WHO's current strategy for the period 2019-2023).

A commitment to global health

Thanks to the launch of the World Health Data Hub, Member States' access to health data and approvals of national assessments has been simplified.

Member States have demonstrated a commitment to sustainable financing of WHO by adopting the method of increasing estimated contributions to 50% of the core budget of the originally approved program budget in 2022-2023 by the biennium 2030-2031. Another element of sustainable financing is the investment round, which WHO will launched at WHA77, to provide funding for WHO's core work for the next 4 years (2025-2028).

WHO will engage with existing and new donors and other partners through an inclusive engagement process culminating in a high-level funding event in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Note to editors

WHOTriple billion goals, by 2023: 1 billion more people to benefit from universal health coverage; 1 billion more people better protected from health emergencies; 1 billion more people enjoy better health and well-being. The 13th General Program of Work (GPW13) was extended to 2025, resulting in another two-year period to achieve the three billion targets. WHA77 will consider the new GPW14, the WHO strategy for 2025-2028, for approval.