Reported by Ariajegbe Sylvia Esezobor
Global life expectancy has returned to close to pre-pandemic levels, reaching 73.3 years in 2023, just 0.1 years below the 73.4 years recorded in 2019, according to new estimates released on Friday, October 2, 2026, by the World Health Organization in its annual Global Health Estimates report. The figures mark a significant recovery from the pandemic's lowest point, when global life expectancy plunged to 71.5 years in 2021, erasing nearly a decade of progress in health outcomes. But the recovery is uneven, and the years people are living are not necessarily years lived in good health.
Healthy life expectancy, which measures the number of years a person can expect to live in full health, has recovered more slowly. It stood at 62.8 years in 2023, still 0.4 years below its 2019 level. The gap between total life expectancy and healthy life expectancy means that people are living longer, but many of those additional years are spent in poor health, managing chronic conditions, disability or mental illness. "Living longer is one of the great achievements of public health," said Dr Alain Labrique, Director of WHO's Department of Data, Digital Health, Analytics and AI. "The next challenge is to ensure that those additional years are lived in good health, while health systems are equipped to respond to the changing needs of populations."
The report paints a picture of a global health landscape that is both recovering from the pandemic and undergoing a profound long-term transformation. Noncommunicable diseases now account for 74 per cent of all deaths worldwide, up from 58 per cent in 2000 when the Global Health Estimates study began. Eight of the world's ten leading causes of death in 2023 were noncommunicable diseases, reflecting a shift that is increasingly visible across all income levels. For the first time, communicable diseases accounted for less than half of all deaths in low-income countries, marking another step in the global epidemiological transition.
Ischaemic heart disease remains the world's biggest killer, responsible for approximately 9.5 million deaths in 2023, up from 3.0 million in 2000. It also caused 210 million disability-adjusted life years, a measure of years of healthy life lost. Stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease were the second and third leading causes of death, responsible for approximately 11 per cent and six per cent of total deaths respectively. Lower respiratory infections, the world's most deadly communicable disease, came fourth. Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia came fifth in 2023, killing 2.1 million people. Dementia deaths have tripled since 2000, and the condition rose from the 19th leading cause of death to the fifth in just over two decades.
The mental health toll of the pandemic years is also becoming clearer. Between 2019 and 2023, the global age-standardised disability-adjusted life year rate increased by approximately 20 per cent for depressive disorders and nearly 45 per cent for anxiety disorders. Together, these conditions accounted for an estimated 110 million years of healthy life lost through premature death and disability in 2023. Drug use disorders showed similar trends, adding to a growing and changing burden of disease that health systems were not designed to manage.
COVID-19 itself has dropped out of the top ten leading causes of death for the first time since the pandemic began. The virus was directly responsible for an estimated 5.3 million deaths in 2020 and 9.4 million in 2021, making it the third and first leading cause of death in those years respectively. By 2023, directly attributable deaths had fallen to 900,000, making it the 14th leading cause of death. The report also confirms that an estimated 22.1 million excess deaths occurred globally between 2020 and 2023, a figure nearly three times higher than the official COVID-19 death toll, reflecting the broader mortality impact of the pandemic, including deaths from disrupted health services and other indirect causes.
The recovery in life expectancy has been uneven across regions. Between 2000 and 2023, the WHO Americas region recorded the largest increases in risk of mortality and healthy life loss, while the Western Pacific saw substantial declines. Increases in cardiovascular risk at the individual level were recorded in the Western Pacific and South-East Asia regions, highlighting persistent inequalities in health outcomes between populations. The risk of dying from diabetes has risen substantially since 2000, particularly in South-East Asia, where rapid urbanisation and dietary changes have contributed to rising rates of the disease.
Progress in other areas has been more encouraging. Deaths from HIV and AIDS have fallen by 62 per cent since 2020, moving from the world's seventh leading cause of death in 2000 to 22nd place in 2023. This decline reflects decades of investment in treatment and prevention, though the disease remains a significant burden in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and other regions.
The WHO's Global Health Estimates provide a comprehensive picture of how health has changed across countries and regions between 2000 and 2023, covering trends in life expectancy, causes of death and disease burden. The report's release comes as global health systems continue to grapple with the aftermath of the pandemic, including backlogs in routine care, workforce shortages and the mental health crisis that has emerged as one of the pandemic's most enduring legacies. The estimates underscore the need for health systems to adapt to the changing needs of populations, shifting from a focus on infectious diseases to the management of chronic conditions, mental health and the complex, long-term care requirements of ageing populations.
For policymakers, the report's central message is that living longer is not the same as living well. The recovery in life expectancy is welcome, but the slower recovery in healthy life expectancy suggests that the quality of those additional years requires urgent attention. As Labrique put it, the next challenge is to ensure that those additional years are lived in good health. The data released by the WHO provides the clearest evidence yet of how far the world has come since the pandemic, and how much remains to be done to ensure that the years gained are years worth living.
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