Humanity Has Nearly Recovered Its Lost Years—but Not Its Health

Humanity has almost recovered the years of life lost during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But there is a less reassuring number hiding behind that achievement.

According to the World Health Organization's latest Global Health Estimates, global life expectancy reached 73.3 years in 2023, almost returning to the 73.4 years recorded in 2019 before the pandemic disrupted mortality around the world.

Healthy life expectancy did not recover as quickly.

The average number of years people could expect to live in reasonably good health reached 62.8 years in 2023—still 0.4 years below its 2019 level.

That difference captures one of the defining public-health challenges of the 21st century.

We are becoming increasingly successful at keeping people alive.

The harder task is keeping them healthy, independent and functional during the additional years we have gained.

WHO's new estimates, released on October 2, 2026, show a world emerging from the pandemic into a very different health landscape: chronic diseases dominate mortality, dementia has climbed dramatically in the rankings, diabetes is worsening in vulnerable regions, and depression and anxiety are consuming an extraordinary number of healthy years.

The next revolution in global health may therefore be less about adding years to life.

It may be about adding health to those years.

The Good News: Global Life Expectancy Is Almost Back

At the global level, the recovery is remarkable.

COVID-19 caused one of the sharpest worldwide disruptions to life expectancy in modern times. Yet by 2023, the global average had rebounded to 73.3 years, only one-tenth of a year below its 2019 level.

That number reflects decades of enormous progress.

Vaccination.

Safer childbirth.

Improved sanitation.

Antibiotics.

Treatment for cardiovascular disease.

Better control of many infectious illnesses.

Improved nutrition in large parts of the world.

Emergency medicine.

Public-health surveillance.

Those advances have allowed far more children to reach adulthood and far more adults to survive diseases that would once have killed them much earlier.

But life expectancy tells only one part of the story.

A society can become very good at preventing death while still leaving millions of people living for years with disability, chronic illness or loss of independence.

That is why the second number matters.

Healthy Life Expectancy Is Recovering More Slowly

WHO's healthy life expectancy, usually abbreviated HALE, reached 62.8 years globally in 2023.

It remained 0.4 years below the corresponding 2019 level, even though total life expectancy had almost completely recovered.

That means the pandemic-era gap in survival has nearly closed faster than the gap in healthy living.

The difference is subtle but enormously important.

If public health celebrates only how long people live, it can miss whether those additional years are spent:

walking independently,

working,

remembering loved ones,

managing daily activities,

living without severe pain,

or depending heavily on medical and family support.

Longevity is an achievement.

Healthy longevity is a bigger one.

Life Expectancy Does Not Mean “The Age You Will Die”

Before comparing the figures, it is important to understand what life expectancy actually means.

Life expectancy at birth is a population statistic.

It estimates how long a newborn would live on average if the age-specific death rates observed during a particular period continued throughout that person's life.

It is not a countdown clock.

A global life expectancy of 73.3 years does not mean everyone alive today should expect to die at 73.

Someone who has already reached 70 has already survived many mortality risks included in the birth statistic and therefore has a different remaining life expectancy.

The number can also shift when society changes.

A pandemic can push it downward quickly.

Falling infant mortality can raise it.

Better heart-disease treatment can raise it.

War, famine or a new epidemic can lower it.

Life expectancy is therefore best viewed as a snapshot of mortality conditions in a population, not a prediction of an individual's lifespan.

Healthy Life Expectancy Measures Something Different

HALE attempts to answer a more difficult question:

How many years of life are expected to be lived in full or reasonably good health?

It adjusts total life expectancy to account for time lived with diseases, injuries and disabilities of different severity.

That makes it closer to what people often mean when they casually use the word healthspan.

But the terms are not perfectly interchangeable.

“Healthspan” is a broad everyday concept referring to the years a person remains healthy and functional.

HALE is a formal statistical measure constructed from population-level mortality and disability estimates.

That distinction matters.

The 10.5-Year Gap Does Not Mean Everyone Becomes Sick at 62.8

Subtract 62.8 from 73.3 and you get 10.5 years.

It is tempting to interpret that as:

“The average person lives healthily until 62.8 and then spends exactly 10.5 years sick.”

That is not what the numbers mean.

HALE weights years lived with health limitations according to the severity of those limitations.

A person may develop hypertension at 50, remain active into their seventies, experience increasing disability later and still contribute differently to the calculation at each stage.

Another person might remain very healthy into old age and then experience only a short period of severe illness.

The roughly 10.5-year difference is therefore useful for visualizing the global burden of ill health, but it is not a universal timeline for an individual's life.

Still, the gap tells us something important:

the world loses a substantial portion of potential healthy life even after people survive.

The Global Health Picture in Seven Numbers

These figures describe a profound epidemiological transition.

People are surviving many of the conditions that once killed them early.

But the diseases that dominate the later decades of life are becoming a much larger part of the global health burden.

Chronic Diseases Now Cause Nearly Three-Quarters of Global Deaths

In 2000, noncommunicable diseases accounted for 58% of deaths worldwide.

By 2023, that share had reached 74%.

Eight of the world's ten leading causes of death were noncommunicable diseases.

These conditions include major categories such as:

cardiovascular disease,

cancer,

diabetes,

chronic respiratory disease,

kidney disease,

and dementia.

The shift is enormous.

But it is not entirely bad news.

Chronic Disease Dominance Is Partly a Consequence of Success

Imagine a population in which large numbers of children die from infectious diseases, women face high mortality during childbirth, and adults frequently die from untreated infections.

Many people simply never reach the ages at which dementia, cancer and cardiovascular disease become common.

Now improve:

vaccination,

sanitation,

nutrition,

maternal care,

antibiotic access,

child survival,

and basic medicine.

More people survive into middle and old age.

Chronic diseases inevitably become a larger proportion of what remains.

This is known broadly as an epidemiological transition.

So the rising proportion of deaths caused by noncommunicable diseases does not mean the world has simply become less healthy.

Part of the shift reflects one of public health's greatest successes:

more people are living long enough to develop diseases of ageing.

The difficulty is that health systems built to defeat acute infections are not automatically prepared to manage chronic illness for decades.

Chronic Disease Requires a Different Kind of Health System

An infection may sometimes be treated during one clinical episode.

Many chronic diseases are different.

A person with diabetes may require care for 30 years.

Someone with hypertension may need monitoring and medication indefinitely.

A person living with dementia may eventually need intensive assistance every day.

A stroke survivor may need:

rehabilitation,

mobility assistance,

medication,

home adaptation,

and caregiving.

Cancer can increasingly become a condition people live with rather than die from immediately.

That changes the economics of health care.

The challenge is no longer merely:

Can we save this person's life today?

It becomes:

Can we support this person for the next 10, 20 or 30 years?

Heart Disease Is Still the World's Biggest Killer

Despite major improvements in cardiovascular treatment and prevention, ischaemic heart disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide.

WHO estimates that it caused approximately 9.5 million deaths in 2023.

It was also responsible for around 210 million disability-adjusted life years, or DALYs.

A DALY represents one year of healthy life lost because of premature death or disability.

So 210 million DALYs represent a staggering amount of human life either ended early or lived with substantial health loss.

Heart disease therefore matters not only because it kills.

It also reduces healthy life.

The Heart-Disease Story Is More Complicated Than the Death Count

Worldwide deaths from ischaemic heart disease have increased in absolute numbers over the long term.

But populations have also grown and aged.

That means raw death counts and individual risk are not the same thing.

WHO reports substantial progress in reducing the burden of ischaemic heart disease in many parts of the world since 2000.

Yet the latest estimates also identified increases in individual-level mortality risk in the Western Pacific and South-East Asia regions.

That is particularly relevant for countries such as Bangladesh, which sits within WHO's South-East Asia Region.

But the regional figure should not be mistaken for a Bangladesh-specific estimate.

It is a warning about a broader regional pattern, not proof that every country experienced exactly the same change.

Why Heart Disease Cannot Be Reduced to “Bad Lifestyle Choices”

The major modifiable cardiovascular risk factors are well established.

They include tobacco use, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, harmful alcohol use, high blood pressure, high blood glucose, abnormal blood lipids, overweight and obesity. Air pollution is also an important environmental contributor.

But describing cardiovascular disease purely as the result of individual choices is misleading.

People make choices inside environments.

Can healthy food be afforded?

Is there safe space to walk?

Does a worker have enough time for exercise?

Can someone get their blood pressure checked?

Can they afford medication?

Are tobacco products aggressively marketed?

How polluted is the air?

How far away is primary care?

WHO itself emphasizes that social and physical environments shape cardiovascular risk and that healthier choices must be made both available and affordable.

Healthy ageing is therefore partly personal behavior.

It is also infrastructure.

Dementia Has Climbed From 19th to Fifth Place

Perhaps the most striking change in WHO's new estimates concerns dementia.

In 2000, Alzheimer disease and other dementias ranked 19th among global causes of death.

By 2023, they had risen to fifth.

Recorded global deaths attributed to dementia tripled over that period.

WHO's updated global cause-of-death ranking estimates that dementia caused around 2.1 million deaths in 2023.

That is a remarkable change in just over two decades.

But it requires careful interpretation.

Why Dementia Deaths Are Rising

Population ageing is almost certainly part of the explanation.

Age is the strongest risk factor for most dementias.

As more people survive into their seventies, eighties and nineties, the number living with dementia naturally rises.

Population growth matters too.

Even if the individual probability of a disease did not change, a larger older population could generate more cases and more deaths.

Diagnosis has also improved in many countries.

Doctors and families may recognize dementia more readily than they did two decades ago.

Death certification practices can change as well.

A death that might once have been coded under pneumonia or another immediate complication may now be recorded with dementia as the underlying cause.

None of those factors means the increase is artificial.

They simply remind us that a tripling of recorded deaths does not mean an individual's personal risk has tripled.

Dementia Shows Why Survival Is Not Enough

Dementia is a particularly powerful example of why healthy life expectancy matters.

Its burden cannot be understood only by counting deaths.

Before death, a person may gradually lose:

memory,

judgment,

communication,

orientation,

mobility,

ability to manage money,

ability to cook,

ability to recognize danger,

and eventually the ability to perform basic daily activities independently.

Families often provide enormous amounts of unpaid care.

A spouse may become a full-time caregiver.

Adult children may leave employment.

Households may absorb years of emotional and financial strain.

This is precisely the kind of burden that disappears when health is measured only by mortality.

A society might keep people alive longer while simultaneously creating a much larger need for long-term care.

WHO's 2026 work on global long-term-care standards explicitly includes home care, community services, caregiver support, workforce and financing as central challenges of population ageing.

Dementia Prevention Is Becoming a Public-Health Priority

There is still no widely available cure that can eliminate most dementia.

That makes risk reduction increasingly important.

WHO updated its dementia risk-reduction guidelines in 2026, emphasizing a life-course approach that includes healthy behavior, management of associated health conditions, reduction of environmental exposures and multidomain interventions.

The goal is not to suggest that every case is preventable.

It is to reduce avoidable risk where evidence supports doing so.

That distinction matters.

Dementia is not a moral failure.

Neither a patient nor a family should be blamed because prevention was incomplete.

Diabetes Is Becoming an Especially Serious Threat in South-East Asia

WHO's latest estimates also identify diabetes as a rapidly growing problem.

The risk of dying from diabetes has risen substantially since 2000, with a particularly sharp increase in the South-East Asia Region.

For Bangladesh and neighboring countries, that deserves attention.

Again, a regional estimate cannot substitute for national surveillance.

But it indicates the direction in which health systems across the region increasingly need to prepare.

Diabetes is particularly important because its burden extends far beyond high blood sugar.

Diabetes Damages Multiple Organ Systems

Over time, diabetes can damage blood vessels and nerves.

Its complications include increased risks of:

heart attack,

stroke,

kidney failure,

vision loss,

nerve damage,

foot ulcers,

and lower-limb amputation.

This is another example of how medical progress can simultaneously extend life and increase the importance of healthspan.

A person may survive diabetes for decades because treatment is available.

That is good.

But if blood glucose, blood pressure, kidney function and cardiovascular risk are poorly controlled, those decades may contain substantial disability.

The public-health objective must therefore be more ambitious than preventing death.

It must include preventing complications.

Early Detection Matters Because Type 2 Diabetes Can Be Quiet

Type 2 diabetes may develop gradually.

Symptoms can remain mild enough to go unnoticed for years.

By the time serious complications become obvious, damage may already have accumulated.

That makes affordable primary care especially important.

Blood-glucose testing.

Blood-pressure monitoring.

Access to medicines.

Eye screening.

Kidney monitoring.

Foot care.

Patient education.

These are not glamorous technologies.

But across millions of people, they can determine whether longer survival becomes healthy survival.

WHO notes that low- and middle-income countries often face major gaps in access to basic diabetes technologies and essential medicines.

The Diabetes Prevention Story Is Also About Environment

Healthy diet, physical activity and weight management can substantially reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes and its complications.

But the same warning that applies to cardiovascular disease applies here.

It is too easy to turn a population-level epidemic into an accusation against individuals.

Food systems shape diet.

Urban design shapes physical activity.

Work schedules shape sleep and exercise.

Income shapes what families can buy.

Education shapes awareness.

Primary-care access determines whether disease is detected early.

The rise of diabetes therefore requires both personal prevention and structural intervention.

Mental Health Is Consuming More Healthy Years

Deaths alone also fail spectacularly to capture the burden of mental illness.

Depression and anxiety may not appear near the top of global death rankings in the same way as heart disease.

Yet they can impair people's ability to:

work,

study,

sleep,

care for children,

maintain relationships,

leave home,

concentrate,

and experience ordinary daily life.

WHO's new estimates show a striking post-pandemic change.

Between 2019 and 2023, the global age-standardized DALY rate increased by approximately 20% for depressive disorders and nearly 45% for anxiety disorders.

Together, depression and anxiety accounted for an estimated 110 million years of healthy life lost in 2023.

That number should fundamentally change how we think about the meaning of “global health.”

What Does “Age-Standardized” Mean?

Populations do not all have the same age structure.

One country may have a very young population.

Another may contain a large proportion of older adults.

Because many diseases are strongly related to age, directly comparing crude rates can be misleading.

Age standardization mathematically adjusts rates to a common reference population.

That helps answer a more useful question:

Would the difference still exist if the populations had similar age structures?

So when WHO reports large increases in age-standardized DALY rates for anxiety and depression, the change cannot simply be dismissed as a consequence of the world getting older.

Why Did Depression and Anxiety Increase?

The statistics can tell us that the burden changed.

They cannot, by themselves, prove exactly why.

Possible influences include:

the social disruption caused by COVID-19,

bereavement,

economic insecurity,

school disruption,

loneliness,

conflict,

displacement,

changes in work,

greater awareness,

and improved identification of mental-health conditions.

Different factors may dominate in different countries.

And a population-level trend cannot tell us what caused one individual's depression or anxiety.

That is why the responsible response is not to search for one global explanation.

It is to recognize the enormous treatment need.

WHO estimates that 1.2 billion people were living with a mental disorder in 2023, with anxiety and depressive disorders the most common.

Mental Health Exposes the Weakness of Measuring Only Death

Imagine two diseases.

Disease A kills 100,000 people quickly.

Disease B rarely causes direct death but leaves tens of millions unable to work or function normally for years.

Which is the greater public-health problem?

Mortality statistics alone cannot answer.

That is why DALYs exist.

They attempt to combine:

years lost because people die early

with

years lived with disability.

Mental-health disorders demonstrate why this broader measure is indispensable.

A condition does not have to be a leading direct cause of death to consume an enormous portion of humanity's healthy life.

Low-Income Countries Are Entering a Double-Burden Era

One of the most consequential findings in WHO's 2023 estimates is easy to overlook.

For the first time, communicable diseases accounted for less than half of all deaths in low-income countries.

That is another major milestone in the epidemiological transition.

But it absolutely does not mean infectious disease has been defeated.

WHO's cause-of-death analysis shows that seven of the ten leading causes of death in low-income countries were still communicable diseases in 2023. Malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS remained among the leading causes.

The old problems have not disappeared.

New ones are being added.

The Double Burden Is Harder Than Either Problem Alone

A wealthy ageing society can devote enormous resources to:

cardiology,

cancer treatment,

dementia care,

rehabilitation,

and long-term care.

A low-income country may need all of those while simultaneously maintaining:

vaccination,

malaria control,

tuberculosis treatment,

maternal services,

nutrition programmes,

diarrhoeal-disease prevention,

and outbreak surveillance.

That creates a double burden.

Health systems must manage the diseases of poverty and infection while also confronting the chronic conditions once associated mainly with richer countries.

It is one of the defining challenges of global health.

Acute-Care Systems Struggle With Multimorbidity

Chronic disease rarely arrives alone.

An older patient may simultaneously have:

diabetes,

hypertension,

kidney disease,

arthritis,

vision problems,

and depression.

This is called multimorbidity.

A fragmented health system may send that person to several specialists who rarely communicate with one another.

One prescription may interact with another.

Transportation becomes difficult.

Family members coordinate appointments.

Medical records may be incomplete.

The patient may understand none of the overall plan.

That is why ageing populations need stronger primary care and better integration, not merely more hospital beds.

Living Longer Can Deepen Inequality

Global averages conceal enormous differences.

Two countries can both report life expectancy near 75 years while having very different healthy life expectancy.

Even within one country, healthy years may vary sharply by:

income,

education,

occupation,

sex,

geography,

air quality,

housing,

food security,

and access to health care.

A wealthy person may live into their eighties with regular screening, safe housing and help managing chronic disease.

A poorer person may survive just as long but accumulate disability much earlier.

That produces a form of inequality that total lifespan alone can hide.

The question is not only:

Who lives longer?

It is:

Who gets to remain healthy while living longer?

How WHO Produces These Global Estimates

Numbers covering almost eight billion people can create an illusion of perfect precision.

They are not perfect counts.

WHO's Global Health Estimates combine data from many sources, including:

national civil and vital-registration systems,

WHO technical programmes,

United Nations partners,

inter-agency groups,

scientific studies,

and Global Burden of Disease research.

Where countries have high-quality death registration with medical certification, those records provide particularly valuable evidence.

But many countries do not record every death with an accurate medically certified cause.

Statistical modeling is therefore necessary.

Why Modeling Is Necessary

Imagine relying only on formally registered deaths.

Countries with complete civil-registration systems would appear in great detail.

Countries where many people die at home without medical certification would virtually disappear from global statistics.

That would create a severely distorted picture.

For settings without complete registration, WHO can incorporate information such as household surveys, sample registration systems, verbal autopsy data, epidemiological studies and other estimates.

Modeling is therefore not an unfortunate substitute that should simply be eliminated.

It is part of making global comparison possible.

The real requirement is transparency about the assumptions and uncertainty involved.

Why WHO Estimates Sometimes Change

A historical figure published today may not match a WHO figure published five years ago.

That does not necessarily mean one was “wrong.”

New information arrives.

Countries improve registration.

Population estimates are revised.

Disease models improve.

Coding practices change.

Statistical methods are updated.

WHO explicitly warns that because of changes in data and methods, the new 2000–2023 Global Health Estimates are not directly comparable with previously released WHO estimate series.

That point matters whenever old and new reports are compared.

The scientifically appropriate approach is usually to compare years within the same revised estimate series, rather than combining numbers produced under different methodologies.

WHO Also Consults Countries Before Publication

The estimates are not generated in isolation.

WHO says the Global Health Estimates are reviewed with Member States through consultation involving national focal points and WHO country and regional offices before publication.

That does not eliminate uncertainty.

But it is another layer of review designed to improve consistency and identify problems.

Global health numbers should therefore be treated as carefully modeled estimates—not as an exact worldwide census of every illness and death.

What Should We Measure Next?

For more than a century, rising life expectancy has been one of humanity's clearest markers of progress.

And rightly so.

A world in which fewer children die and more adults reach old age is better than the world it replaced.

But longevity alone is becoming an incomplete success metric.

As chronic disease grows, countries increasingly need to track:

healthy life expectancy,

disability,

functional independence,

quality of life,

caregiving burden,

and access to long-term support

alongside conventional mortality.

Otherwise a government could celebrate rising life expectancy while ignoring the fact that its population is spending more of those years with preventable disability.

Prevention Has to Begin Long Before Old Age

Healthy ageing does not start at 70.

The cardiovascular disease diagnosed at 65 may reflect blood pressure that was poorly controlled for 20 years.

Type 2 diabetes may develop gradually over decades.

Some dementia risks accumulate across the life course.

Smoking-related lung disease reflects exposures beginning much earlier.

Mental-health problems often start in childhood or adolescence.

That means healthspan policy is not simply elder care.

It includes:

childhood nutrition,

clean air,

education,

safe housing,

tobacco control,

physical activity,

primary care,

mental-health treatment,

and chronic-disease screening.

Healthy ageing is built across an entire lifetime.

Health Systems Need to Move From Rescue to Maintenance

Modern medicine is extraordinarily good at rescue.

A blocked coronary artery can be opened.

A severe infection can be treated.

A premature infant can survive.

A stroke patient can receive emergency intervention.

Those achievements should be celebrated.

But the emerging disease burden requires equal attention to something less dramatic:

maintenance.

Checking blood pressure before the stroke.

Managing diabetes before kidney failure.

Supporting depression before employment and relationships collapse.

Rehabilitation after injury.

Helping a person with dementia remain safely at home.

Supporting the daughter who has become an unpaid caregiver.

These interventions rarely produce cinematic moments.

They may produce more healthy years.

Primary Care May Be the Most Important Infrastructure of an Ageing World

Specialist hospitals attract attention.

But many of the conditions dominating future health are best controlled through dependable primary care.

A strong primary-care system can:

identify hypertension,

screen for diabetes,

support smoking cessation,

manage cholesterol,

recognize depression,

coordinate multiple medications,

refer cognitive decline,

monitor kidney disease,

and help patients navigate specialist services.

When primary care is weak, chronic disease often remains invisible until complications become expensive and irreversible.

The healthspan era therefore requires health systems designed not merely for emergencies but for continuity.

Family Caregivers Cannot Remain an Invisible Workforce

Dementia, stroke and disability expose another weakness in health accounting.

Millions of hours of care occur outside formal institutions.

A husband helps his wife dress.

A daughter leaves work to supervise a parent with dementia.

A son travels across town every evening to manage medications.

Families absorb work that would otherwise require paid nurses or care workers.

The economic value is enormous.

So is the emotional cost.

If societies succeed at extending life while relying indefinitely on unpaid families to absorb the consequences, longer lifespan can become a source of inequality and exhaustion.

Healthy-ageing policy therefore has to include the caregiver as well as the patient.

Cities Also Need to Be Designed for Healthspan

Medicine alone cannot create healthy longevity.

An older adult who cannot safely cross the street becomes less active.

Someone living in a building without accessible stairs or lifts may become isolated.

Poor public transport can turn a manageable disability into social exclusion.

Heat, pollution and unsafe walking environments all influence health.

Age-friendly housing, public spaces and transportation should therefore be thought of as health interventions.

The same is true for younger people.

An environment that makes walking and physical activity easy can reduce chronic-disease risk decades later.

We Should Be Careful With the Phrase “Living in Poor Health”

There is a final human point hidden inside these statistics.

Health is not binary.

People are not simply “healthy” until a particular birthday and “unhealthy” afterward.

A person with diabetes can live an active and satisfying life.

Someone using a wheelchair can have excellent wellbeing.

A person with controlled heart disease may consider themselves healthy.

Disability does not erase quality of life.

HALE is a population tool designed to quantify health loss.

It should not be interpreted as a judgment that years lived with illness or disability are somehow less valuable.

The goal is not to devalue those years.

It is to reduce avoidable suffering and increase people's ability to live them well.

The Bigger Story Is Not That Humanity Is Getting Sicker

That headline would be too simplistic.

Humanity is living longer.

Many infectious diseases kill fewer people than they once did.

Medical treatment has transformed survival.

Millions of people who once would have died young now reach later life.

Those are extraordinary achievements.

The new problem is that success has changed the diseases we must confront.

Heart disease.

Diabetes.

Dementia.

Cancer.

Chronic respiratory illness.

Mental-health disorders.

Long-term disability.

These conditions demand different institutions and different measures of progress.

The public-health system that increased lifespan cannot simply declare victory.

It has created the opportunity for a harder second mission.

Longer Life Is Only Half the Victory

WHO's 2023 estimates tell two stories at the same time.

The first is hopeful.

Global life expectancy has rebounded to 73.3 years, almost exactly where it stood before COVID-19.

The second is a warning.

Healthy life expectancy remains behind.

Noncommunicable diseases now account for 74% of global deaths.

Ischaemic heart disease alone kills about 9.5 million people annually.

Dementia has climbed from nineteenth to fifth place among causes of death.

Diabetes mortality risk is rising sharply in parts of Asia.

Depression and anxiety cost an estimated 110 million healthy years in 2023.

None of this cancels the achievement of longer life.

It tells us what must come next.

For most of modern public health, the great question was:

How do we stop people from dying too soon?

That question remains essential.

But another now stands beside it:

How do we prevent the extra years we have gained from becoming years dominated by avoidable disease, disability and dependence?

Humanity has almost recovered its lost lifespan.

The next challenge is harder.

Recover the health.

Protect independence.

Reduce preventable disability.

Support caregivers.

Build health systems designed for decades of chronic care rather than moments of rescue.

And perhaps most importantly, change the way progress itself is measured.

Because the future of public health should not be judged only by how long people remain alive.

It should also be judged by how much of that life they are able to live well.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was global life expectancy in 2023?

WHO estimates that global life expectancy at birth reached 73.3 years in 2023.

Has global life expectancy recovered from COVID-19?

Almost. Global life expectancy was 73.3 years in 2023 compared with 73.4 years in 2019, meaning it had returned very close to its pre-pandemic level.

What is healthy life expectancy?

Healthy life expectancy, or HALE, estimates how many equivalent years a person can expect to live in full health after adjusting for disease and disability.

What was global healthy life expectancy in 2023?

WHO estimates global HALE at 62.8 years in 2023, still 0.4 years below its 2019 level.

What is the difference between lifespan and healthspan?

Lifespan refers broadly to how long a person lives. Healthspan refers to the period spent in good health and functional independence. WHO's HALE is a formal population measure related to, but not identical with, the everyday concept of healthspan.

Does the gap between 73.3 and 62.8 mean people spend 10.5 years sick?

Not literally. The difference provides a useful illustration of population health loss, but HALE weights years according to disability and is not an age at which everyone suddenly becomes unhealthy.

What percentage of global deaths are caused by noncommunicable diseases?

WHO estimates that 74% of global deaths in 2023 were caused by noncommunicable diseases, up from 58% in 2000.

What are noncommunicable diseases?

They are generally long-lasting conditions that are not transmitted from person to person. Major examples include cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease and dementia.

What was the world's leading cause of death in 2023?

Ischaemic heart disease remained the leading global cause of death.

How many people died from ischaemic heart disease in 2023?

WHO estimates approximately 9.5 million deaths.

What is a DALY?

A disability-adjusted life year represents one year of healthy life lost because of premature death or disability.

How many DALYs were caused by ischaemic heart disease in 2023?

Approximately 210 million DALYs, according to WHO.

Why are heart-disease deaths still high despite better treatment?

Population growth and ageing increase the total number of people exposed to cardiovascular risk. Prevention and treatment have reduced risk in many populations, but progress has been uneven.

What are the major preventable cardiovascular risk factors?

WHO highlights tobacco, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, harmful alcohol use, high blood pressure, high blood glucose, abnormal blood lipids, overweight and obesity, along with environmental factors such as air pollution.

Is dementia now one of the world's five leading causes of death?

Yes. Alzheimer disease and other dementias ranked fifth globally in 2023, compared with nineteenth in 2000.

How much have dementia deaths increased?

WHO says global deaths attributed to Alzheimer disease and other dementias tripled between 2000 and 2023.

Does that mean an individual's dementia risk tripled?

No. Rising death totals can reflect population growth, ageing, diagnostic changes, certification practices and changes in disease risk. A tripling of total recorded deaths is not the same as a tripling of personal risk.

Why does dementia reduce healthy life expectancy so much?

Dementia can progressively impair memory, communication, judgment, mobility and independence, creating years of disability before death as well as major caregiving needs.

Is diabetes becoming more dangerous globally?

WHO reports that the risk of dying from diabetes has risen substantially since 2000, with particularly concerning increases in the South-East Asia Region.

Why is the diabetes trend relevant to Bangladesh?

Bangladesh belongs to WHO's South-East Asia Region, where the latest estimates show particularly concerning diabetes mortality trends. The regional result is relevant to Bangladesh but should not be treated as a Bangladesh-specific estimate.

What complications can diabetes cause?

Diabetes can contribute to heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, vision loss, nerve damage, foot ulcers and lower-limb amputation.

How much has the burden of depression increased since 2019?

WHO estimates that the global age-standardized DALY rate for depressive disorders increased by approximately 20% between 2019 and 2023.

How much has the burden of anxiety increased?

The age-standardized DALY rate for anxiety disorders increased by nearly 45% between 2019 and 2023.

How many healthy years were lost to depression and anxiety in 2023?

Together, depressive and anxiety disorders accounted for an estimated 110 million years of healthy life lost through premature death and disability.

What does age-standardized mean?

Age standardization adjusts rates to a common population structure so that differences are less distorted by one population being older or younger than another.

Are infectious diseases disappearing from low-income countries?

No. They remain extremely important. However, WHO reports that communicable diseases represented less than half of all deaths in low-income countries for the first time in 2023.

Why is that important?

It shows low-income countries are increasingly dealing with chronic diseases while still carrying major burdens from malaria, tuberculosis, diarrhoeal disease, respiratory infections and other communicable conditions.

What is the double burden of disease?

It describes health systems having to manage substantial infectious and maternal or nutritional disease at the same time as rising chronic noncommunicable diseases.

How does WHO calculate global health estimates?

WHO combines national vital-registration systems with estimates from WHO programmes, UN agencies, inter-agency groups, scientific research and Global Burden of Disease data. Statistical methods are used to create comparable estimates where information is incomplete.

Why doesn't WHO simply count every death?

Many countries do not have complete death registration or reliable medical certification of cause of death. Modeling and additional data sources are therefore necessary to create global estimates.

Can WHO estimates change later?

Yes. New data, revised population figures, improved methods and changes in disease classification can alter historical estimates.

Can the 2023 estimates be directly compared with older WHO publications?

Not always. WHO says methodological and data changes mean its new 2000–2023 estimate series should not be directly compared with previously released GHE series.

Why can two countries have similar life expectancy but different health outcomes?

People may survive for similar lengths of time while experiencing very different burdens of chronic illness, disability, access to care and functional independence.

Can healthy life expectancy improve without greatly increasing total lifespan?

Yes. Preventing disability, managing chronic conditions earlier, improving rehabilitation and reducing disease severity could increase healthy years even if total life expectancy changes relatively little.

What should governments do about the growing healthspan gap?

Key priorities include stronger primary care, prevention, chronic-disease management, mental-health services, rehabilitation, long-term care, caregiver support and environments that make healthy living easier.

What is the main message of WHO's new Global Health Estimates?

The world has made remarkable progress in restoring life expectancy after COVID-19, but living longer is no longer enough as a measure of success.

The growing challenge is ensuring that additional years are lived with health, independence and dignity.