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These are the biggest health crises facing the world in 2025

Humanitarian disasters are breeding both short-term and long-term health problems around the world, global health officials said.

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The year 2025 started on a bleak note with 42 health emergencies affecting 305 million people worldwide, according to global health authorities.

The world’s top health crises are born from humanitarian disasters including wars, political instability and displacement, climate change, and disease outbreaks, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a new report.

These conflicts can disrupt medical services such as vaccination campaigns, limit people’s access to clean water and sanitary conditions, increase malnutrition and the spread of infections, harm people’s mental health, and see healthcare facilities attacked, not to mention the death toll from the disasters themselves, according to the organisation.

“The delivery of healthcare is fundamental to building peace,” Dr Mike Ryan, who leads the WHO’s health emergencies programme, told journalists during a press briefing.

The agency said 17 of the 42 health emergencies facing the globe this year are “grade three” crises – the most severe type.

Here’s a closer look at the most serious crises facing the world in 2025.

War in Ukraine

Ukraine’s health system has been pummeled since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.

There have been more than 200 attacks on healthcare facilities, which have caused “significant damage and eroded hope,” WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during the briefing.

The Ukraine war is the only top-level health emergency in Europe, with more than 12.7 million people in need of medical aid, the WHO estimates.

Israeli conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah

More than 46,600 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, when Israel began an air and ground assault on Gaza after the militant group Hamas killed about 1,200 people in attacks at a music festival and kibbutzim in southern Israel.

The war has decimated Gaza’s hospitals, and according to the WHO, more than 3 million people now need medical support in Gaza and the West Bank.

In Lebanon, about 1.2 million people were displaced by Israeli forces after the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah launched rockets and missiles into Israel in 2023.

While the two sides reached a ceasefire deal in November, there are now only four functional hospitals in areas affected by the conflict, the WHO said.

Aid workers there are trying to ensure essential services, including trauma care, remain available while they help rebuild the health system for the returning Lebanese.

Sudan’s civil war

Sudan has faced 141 attacks on healthcare facilities since its civil war broke out in 2023, with 39 per cent of medical centres reportedly destroyed or non-functional, according to the WHO. 

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In addition, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) announced this month that it will withdraw from one hospital after an attack in the emergency ward.

About 30.4 million people in Sudan need emergency medical care, the WHO said.

Further, more than 2.9 million people have fled Sudan, straining the health systems of neighbouring countries while refugee camps face outbreaks of cholera, malaria, measles, and hepatitis E.

Fallout in Syria and Afghanistan

Syria’s health system was weakened long before President Bashar al-Assad’s ouster in December, which cleared the way for tens of thousands of refugees to return to the country. 

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More than 16.7 million Syrians needed health aid last year, the WHO said, and that number is likely to rise in 2025.

Meanwhile, an estimated 14.3 million people are in need of health help in Afghanistan, where two decades of war and the Taliban’s tightened grip since 2021 have left the health system “fragmented and severely under-resourced,” the WHO said.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees have been forced to return from Pakistan since 2023, while millions of people remain displaced within Afghanistan and health workers are struggling to ensure medical care, including preventive services, are accessible.

“You can’t put these things on the back burner,” Ryan said, citing early detection and treatment for breast and cervical cancer as examples.

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Growing insecurity in Haiti

Weakened state institutions and rising gang violence have put roughly 40 per cent of Haitians in need of urgent medical care, the WHO said. The country is also grappling with an ongoing cholera epidemic.

Overlapping threats in Africa and Asia

In Myanmar, the growing conflict between Buddhists and Muslims – paired with displacement, natural disasters, economic problems, and the risk of cholera outbreaks – is endangering millions of people, the WHO said.

In Yemen, more than 19.5 million people need medical care as a result of environmental crises and conflict. The country has been pushed toward famine, while vaccine-preventable diseases such as diphtheria and pertussis (whooping cough) continue to spread.

Some 21.4 million people require health aid in Ethiopia, where disasters like drought, floods, and landslides, plus outbreaks of cholera and malaria and ongoing violence are all major health threats.

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Somalia is also grappling with disease outbreaks and climate-related crises, and has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. Six million people there need urgent healthcare, the WHO said.

In South Sudan, the health sector has been crippled by outbreaks of malaria and measles, and it’s been difficult for humanitarian aid to flow because of security and bureaucratic issues.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is dealing with ongoing cases of mpox, cholera, measles, polio, and COVID-19, as well as security challenges, food insecurity, and natural disasters leading to about 13 million people in need of emergency medical care.

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