World health statistics 2018: monitoring health for the SDGs, sustainable development goals

The World Health Statistics series is WHO’s annual compilation of health statistics for its 194 Member States. The series is produced by the WHO Department of Information, Evidence and Research, of the Health Metrics and Measurement Cluster, in collaboration with all relevant WHO technical departments.

World health statistics 2018 focuses on the health and health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and associated targets by bringing together data on a wide range of health-related SDG indicators. It also links to the three SDG-aligned strategic priorities of the WHO’s 13th General Programme of Work, 2019¬2023.1

World health statistics 2018 is organized into three parts. First, in order to improve understanding and interpretation of the data presented, Part 1 outlines the different types of data used and provides an overview of their compilation, processing and analysis. The resulting statistics are then publicized by WHO through its flagship products such as the World Health Statistics series. In Part 2 summaries are provided of the current status of selected health-related SDG indicators at global and regional levels, based on data available as of early 2018. As indicated above, World health statistics 2018 links to the SDG-aligned strategic priorities of the WHO’s 13th General Programme of Work. In Part 3, each of these three strategic priorities of achieving universal health coverage (UHC), addressing health emergencies and promoting healthier populations are illustrated through the use of highlight stories. In Annexes A and B, country-level statistics are presented for selected health-related SDG indicators. Additionally, Annex B also presents statistics at WHO regional and global levels. For the first time, the type of data used for each indicator (“comparable estimate”; “primary data”; or “other data”), as described in Part 1, is also shown.