Global Life Expectancy Nearly Back to Pre-Pandemic Levels, WHO Says

Global life expectancy has almost fully recovered from the drop caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization said in its latest Global Health Estimates, released on Friday.

A person born in 2023 could expect to live about 73.3 years on average, nearly matching the 73.4 years recorded in 2019, according to the WHO figures as reported by AFP and published on the agency’s own data pages. Life expectancy had fallen to 71.5 years in 2021, at the height of the pandemic.

The recovery in years lived in good health has been slower. Healthy life expectancy reached 62.8 years in 2023, still about 0.4 years below its 2019 level, AFP reported. The agency also found that deaths from dementia have tripled and that health loss linked to anxiety and depression has risen sharply since the pandemic.

Alain Labrique, who leads the WHO’s data department, called living longer one of the great achievements of public health and said the next challenge is making sure those extra years are lived in good health.

The report shows how the world’s health burden has shifted. Of roughly 61 million deaths worldwide in 2023, noncommunicable diseases such as heart disease, stroke and chronic lung disease accounted for about 74 percent, up from 58 percent in 2000. Eight of the top 10 causes of death were noncommunicable.

Ischemic heart disease remained the leading killer, responsible for about 9.5 million deaths in 2023, up from 3 million in 2000, according to both AFP and the WHO. Stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease ranked second and third, followed by lower respiratory infections, and Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, which killed about 2.1 million people.

COVID-19 itself has receded sharply as a cause of death. The WHO estimates it directly caused about 5.3 million deaths in 2020 and 9.4 million in 2021, when it was the world’s leading cause of death. By 2023 the toll had fallen to about 900,000, and the disease dropped out of the top 10 for the first time since the pandemic began. Deaths from HIV and AIDS have also fallen steeply, down about 62 percent since 2020, AFP reported.

Progress has been uneven. Between 2000 and 2023, the WHO’s Americas region, which includes the United States, recorded the largest increases in mortality risk and in years of healthy life lost, while the Western Pacific region saw substantial declines.

The WHO says diabetes, dementia, mental health conditions and drug use disorders are placing growing pressure on health systems, and that the shift toward deaths from chronic disease is no longer limited to high-income countries. Such conditions often require years of care rather than a single cure.