The World Health Organisation on Tuesday appealed to global leaders for $1 billion to tackle health crises this year in the world’s 36 most severe emergencies, including in Gaza, Sudan, Haiti, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The UN health body estimated that about 239 million people would require urgent humanitarian assistance this year and that the fund would help in sustaining essential health services in the world, particularly in the listed countries.
Speaking on the health outlook this year during a chat with journalists in Geneva, the WHO health emergencies chief, Chikwe Ihekweazu, said “A quarter of a billion people are living through humanitarian crises that strip away the most basic protections: safety, shelter, and access to health care.”
“In these settings, health needs are surging, whether due to injuries, disease outbreaks, malnutrition or untreated chronic diseases. Yet, access to care is shrinking”, the health expert added.
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He explained that the WHO’s emergency request was significantly lower than in recent years, given the global funding crunch for aid operations.
According to him, last year the WHO had appealed for $1.5 billion but only secured $900 million.
Ihekwuasu lamented that unfortunately, the UN agency had been “recognising … that the appetite for resource mobilisation is much smaller than it was in previous years. That’s one of the reasons that we’ve calibrated our ask a little bit more towards what is available realistically, understanding the situation around the world, the constraints that many countries have.”
This year, the WHO said it would be prioritising hyper-prioritising the highest-impact services and scaling back lower‑impact activities to maximise lives saved.
In 2025, Ihekwusu disclosed that global funding shortage forced 6,700 health facilities across 22 humanitarian settings to either close or reduce services, thereby denying 53 million people from accessing health care.
He clarified: “Families living on the edge face impossible decisions, such as whether to buy food or medicine. People should never have to make these choices.
“This is why today we are appealing to the better sense of countries and of people and asking them to invest in a healthier, safer world”, the health expert stressed.
It would be recalled that the United States had slashed foreign aid spending under President Donald Trump, who on his first day back in office in January 2025, announced the country’s one-year withdrawal from the WHO.
