Global life expectancy is close to returning to its pre-Covid-19 pandemic level, but the outlook for years lived in good health is recovering more slowly, according to the latest global data from the World Health Organization (WHO) published on Friday.
Global life expectancy reached 73.3 years in 2023, close to the 73.4 years recorded in 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the WHO’s annual report on global health statistics. In 2021, it had fallen to 71.5 years.
“Living longer is one of the great success stories of public health,” Dr Alain Labrique, director of WHO’s Department of Data, Digital Health, Analytics and AI, said in a statement. “The next challenge is to ensure that these additional years are lived in good health, while adapting health systems to meet the changing needs of populations,” he added.
According to the UN organization, the expectation of years spent “in good health” has recovered more slowly, reaching 62.8 years in 2023, a level still 0.4 years lower than that of 2019.
Between 2000 and 2023, says the WHO, the Americas region recorded the largest increases in the risk of mortality and loss of healthy life years, while the Western Pacific region experienced a “considerable decline”.
The growing burden of non-communicable diseases
At the same time, an underlying trend reveals an increasing predominance of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), such as cardiovascular, respiratory diseases, diabetes or Alzheimer’s disease, which represent a growing share of deaths.
Thus in 2023, NCDs were responsible for 74% of deaths worldwide, compared to 58% in 2000, and that same year, for the first time, communicable diseases represented less than half of all deaths in low-income countries, thus marking a new stage in the global epidemiological transition.
