The world is on track to miss its health targets

Every year the World Health Organization publishes a global health statistics report. It features the numbers behind world health trends and, importantly, assesses whether we’re on track to reach ambitious goals set in 2015. It’s a bit like a health grade.

The 2026 report was published on Wednesday. And the results aren’t looking brilliant. While we are seeing some improvements, they are uneven, and they’re far too slow. The targets themselves are part of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals , a sprawling and ambitious plan focused on improving life around the world. The 17 goals were set to tackle poverty and climate change and to boost education, gender equality, health, and well-being, among many other quality of life issues. Those targets were meant to be met by 2030. Perhaps they were a little too ambitious. Here are the numbers and statistics that stood out to me on this year’s world health report card. Before the SDGs, there were the Millennium Development Goals. One MDG target was to halt and reverse the spread of HIV—and that target was exceeded by 2015. Back then, we were considered on track to “ end the AIDS epidemic by 2030 .” How depressing, then, to see that in 2024 there were an estimated 1.3 million new cases of HIV. That’s 40% lower than the figure from 2010.

Key points

• The 2026 report was published on Wednesday.
• And the results aren’t looking brilliant.
• While we are seeing some improvements, they are uneven, and they’re far too slow.
• The targets themselves are part of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals , a sprawling and ambitious plan focused on improving life around the world.
• The 17 goals were set to tackle poverty and climate change and to boost education, gender equality, health, and well-being, among many other quality of life issues.