World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said 2025 brought major global health achievements — notably the adoption of the WHO Pandemic Agreement and disease-elimination milestones — alongside severe funding shortfalls and humanitarian crises that strained services and forced workforce cuts at WHO, according to agency statements and reporting from multiple news outlets.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Thursday reviewed the organisation’s work in 2025, highlighting the adoption of the first-ever WHO Pandemic Agreement as the year’s most significant achievement, the validation of multiple countries for disease elimination, the rollout of new tools such as lenacapavir for HIV prevention and GLP-1 therapies for obesity, and WHO responses to dozens of emergencies worldwide — while warning that reduced funding and aid cuts risked reversing decades of progress and required staff reductions at WHO headquarters and in countries supported by the agency, according to WHO and press reports from Geneva and international media outlets.
Major policy win: adoption of the WHO Pandemic Agreement
The adoption of the Pandemic Agreement at the Seventy-eighth World Health Assembly was singled out by Dr Tedros as a “powerful example of what multilateralism can deliver when countries choose cooperation over division,” and has been framed by WHO as a turning point in efforts to strengthen global preparedness and cooperation for future health emergencies, according to the WHO’s year-in-review materials and reporting by Xinhua and UN Media.
As reported by UN Media for UNifeed, Dr Tedros said the agreement was the most significant achievement of 2025 and that member states are negotiating an annex on equitable access to countermeasures, a component intended to secure fairer distribution of vaccines, treatments and diagnostics in future pandemics.
Health gains: disease elimination and new tools
WHO reported several concrete public-health advances in 2025, including validation of 13 countries for the elimination of various diseases, certification of additional countries as malaria-free, and the first country to achieve triple elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, syphilis and hepatitis B, the agency’s published account of the year states and reporting by Xinhua confirms.
Expanded immunisation and innovations
WHO highlights that seven more countries rolled out WHO-approved malaria vaccines in 2025, bringing the total number of countries using this tool to 24 and reaching more than 10 million children annually, and that new guidance was issued for innovations such as lenacapavir for HIV prevention and GLP-1 therapies for obesity, according to WHO’s “Stronger together” year summary and WHO statements cited by international press.
Humanitarian emergencies and operational strain
Dr Tedros said WHO responded to 48 emergencies across 79 countries and territories during 2025, citing major crises in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine among others that required emergency medical teams, rehabilitation of hospitals and medical evacuations, as described in WHO briefings and UN Media coverage.
Reporting by Xinhua for international audiences stated that WHO prioritised restoring critical health services, rehabilitating hospitals and supporting thousands of medical evacuations amid ongoing ceasefire and access challenges in some conflict-affected areas, reflecting continued high operational demand on the agency.
Funding shortfalls and organisational consequences
Alongside those gains, WHO warned in its end-of-year accounts that cuts to aid and donor funding in 2025 posed an existential risk to recent progress in child survival and other areas, and that early estimates suggested childhood mortality could rise for the first time this century if funding trends continued, according to UN Media and WHO’s own reporting.
UN Media reported that Dr Tedros said reductions to WHO’s budget left the organisation “with no choice but to reduce the size of our workforce,” a move reflecting difficult trade-offs between continuing emergency responses and sustaining regular health programmes.
Institutional reactions and wider context
WHO framed 2025 as a year of both scientific and policy progress — including strengthening pandemic intelligence through an AI-powered Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources platform and ongoing work from the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence in Berlin — while urging partners and member states to address funding gaps and strengthen primary health care to protect gains, according to WHO materials and reporting.
Reporting by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health noted Tedros’s emphasis on three “fractures” — in health systems, security and solidarity — and quoted him linking the Pandemic Agreement and other initiatives such as mRNA technology transfer hubs to broader efforts to improve equity and preparedness.
According to Xinhua, Dr Tedros reiterated the central role of immunisation for child survival, citing long-term reductions in under-five mortality and characterising vaccines as among the most transformative public-health inventions, remarks delivered during a media briefing in Geneva.
UN Media’s reporting placed the Pandemic Agreement and the agency’s emergency responses alongside measurable disease-control milestones — for example, elimination of trachoma in several countries and Niger’s certification as the first African country to eliminate river blindness — which WHO listed in its 2025 milestones summary.
Verified statistics and operational numbers
WHO’s year review and UN Media reported that WHO responded to 48 emergencies in 79 countries and territories in 2025 and validated 13 countries for disease elimination; WHO also reported large-scale treatment and vaccination figures in its global neglected tropical diseases and malaria summaries for the year, indicating continued programmatic reach despite constrained resources.
Implications and next steps reported by WHO and media
WHO has called for more sustainable financing and urged member states to finalise annexes to the Pandemic Agreement that ensure equitable access to countermeasures, while signalling continued prioritisation of restoring critical health services, expanding vaccine coverage and deploying new tools against infectious diseases, as set out in WHO communications and by international reporters covering Dr Tedros’s briefing.
Reporting by UN Media for UNifeed emphasised that preserving advances will require political commitment and funding, and that WHO will continue to adapt operations — including workforce reductions — to the funding realities while maintaining emergency response capacities where possible.
The WHO’s own round-up of “milestones that mattered” in 2025 and contemporaneous reporting by Xinhua and UN Media together provide the factual basis for the agency’s assessment of the year: a mix of landmark policy progress and hard operational choices driven by funding constraints and global crises, with concrete public-health gains balanced against serious risks to future progress.
Reporting by UN Media for UNifeed, WHO’s year summary and coverage by Xinhua provided the primary verified account of Dr Tedros’s statements and the organisation’s documented 2025 milestones and challenges, reflecting the agency’s official presentation of achievements and the limitations imposed by reduced financing.
