WHO seeks $1.015 billion for 2026 emergencies as funding gaps leave 53 million without basic care

A clinic running on fumes

The generators at a clinic on the outskirts of Omdurman, Sudan’s second-largest city, have been running on borrowed fuel for weeks. Staff say they have already stopped offering routine vaccinations and most elective surgeries. If another shipment of supplies does not arrive soon, they may have to close altogether.

Scenes like this, once considered exceptional, are becoming common across some of the world’s worst crisis zones. The World Health Organization (WHO) warned this week that funding shortfalls in 2025 disrupted more than 6,600 health facilities, cutting an estimated 53 million people off from basic care—and that without a rapid injection of money, the unraveling could accelerate.

A $1.015 billion appeal for 36 emergencies

On Feb. 3 in Geneva, during a meeting of its Executive Board, WHO launched a US$1.015 billion appeal to support health services in 36 emergencies in 2026, including 14 classified at its highest level of severity. The organization framed the request as a test of whether the international system is prepared to maintain even the most essential services in an era of multiplying crises and shrinking humanitarian budgets.

“Today, WHO is appealing for US$1 billion to sustain its emergency operations in 2026,” Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told member states. “Around one quarter of a billion people are living through humanitarian crises that have stripped away safety, shelter and access to health care. For millions of people, crisis is no longer an interruption to life. It has become the condition of life.”

The new appeal is smaller than the US$1.5 billion WHO sought in both 2024 and 2025, even as conflicts, climate shocks and outbreaks have continued to intensify. WHO officials say the lower figure reflects not a reduction in need but what they describe as “hyper-prioritization”—cutting planned activities to match what donors are realistically likely to fund.

In a foreword to the appeal, Tedros and Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, who heads WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, noted that global defence spending now exceeds US$2.5 trillion a year, while humanitarian and health financing “falls dangerously short.” They warned that “the world is spending more on creating humanitarian emergencies, and less on solving them.”

Where the money would go

The 2026 Health Emergency Appeal covers responses in protracted war zones such as Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria; newer or escalating conflicts in Sudan and Haiti; and multi-country outbreaks of cholera and mpox. It also includes a major operation for what WHO describes as a “Middle East escalation of violence,” focused on Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, particularly the Gaza Strip.

WHO uses a three-tier grading system to classify emergencies. Grade 3, the highest level, triggers a system-wide mobilization of staff and funding and is reserved for crises that overwhelm national capacities and threaten large-scale loss of life. The organization says it is managing 14 Grade 3 operations this year, including Sudan, the occupied Palestinian territory, Haiti, Ukraine, Yemen, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, and multi-region cholera and mpox outbreaks.

Together, those Grade 3 emergencies account for roughly three-quarters of the appeal’s funding requirement. The single largest line item is for the Middle East escalation of violence, where WHO has documented extensive damage to health infrastructure and severe constraints on accessing care.

Snapshots of health systems fraying

Beyond the headline figures, WHO’s country plans offer a glimpse of how quickly care is collapsing in high-risk settings.

Sudan

In Sudan, where fighting between rival military factions erupted in April 2023, WHO estimates 33.7 million people will need humanitarian assistance this year, including 7.4 million who have been internally displaced. Nearly 40% of health facilities are reported to be nonfunctional. Outbreaks of cholera, measles, malaria and dengue have spread amid low vaccination coverage and disrupted water and sanitation systems. WHO is seeking about US$97.7 million for its Sudan operations in 2026.

Haiti

In Haiti, WHO describes the health system as “near collapse” amid escalating gang violence and political instability. Only 37 of 100 inpatient facilities in the capital, Port-au-Prince, remain functional, and nationwide just 26% of 268 inpatient facilities are fully operational.

Between January and September 2025, authorities recorded 6,760 people killed, including 2,481 lynching victims, and more than 50,000 injured. One major hospital alone treated more than 6,300 trauma patients, many with gunshot or explosion wounds. Reports of gender-based violence have surged, with 6,450 cases documented in the first eight months of 2025.

Democratic Republic of the Congo

The situation in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo is dominated by overlapping epidemics. In 2025, the country reported more than 61,000 cholera cases, nearly 2,000 confirmed mpox cases and more than 67,000 measles infections, along with a smaller Ebola outbreak.

Altogether, WHO estimates that cholera, mpox, measles, Ebola, polio and other outbreaks caused more than 450,000 cases of illness and 8,700 deaths in the DRC last year. Public spending on health there is just 0.7% of gross domestic product, leaving external aid to cover roughly 40% of health costs.

Afghanistan

In Afghanistan, one of the world’s most complex humanitarian settings, WHO projects that 14.4 million people will require health assistance in 2026. Years of conflict, economic contraction and natural disasters have left a fragile health system heavily reliant on international support. Earthquakes and disease outbreaks in 2025 compounded the strain, alongside the return of large numbers of Afghans from neighboring countries.

What WHO says it can still keep running

Across these contexts, WHO says its role is to keep “life-saving and life-sustaining” services operating: primary health care, trauma care, maternal and child health, disease surveillance and outbreak response, mental health and psychosocial support, and access to sexual and reproductive health services. In many crisis zones, WHO leads the health cluster, coordinating more than 1,500 partner organizations.

WHO says funding from its 2025 emergency appeal helped deliver 53 million medical consultations, support more than 8,000 health facilities, deploy 1,370 mobile clinics and provide life-saving vaccines to 5.3 million children. But the agency says a sharp drop in humanitarian funding last year forced it and its partners to scale back dramatically. Instead of reaching the 81 million people they had originally planned to assist, they reached only about one-third of that number.

The push for flexible funding—and doubts about donors

The 2026 appeal emphasizes the importance of flexible, unearmarked funding, particularly for the Contingency Fund for Emergencies, which allows WHO to respond to sudden outbreaks or disasters within 24 to 72 hours, before donor pledges arrive. WHO is asking for US$50 million for that fund.

“Every humanitarian crisis is a health crisis,” Ireland’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Noel White, said at the launch. He said Ireland was “proud to support the WHO emergency response through unearmarked, flexible and predictable funding” to the contingency fund.

Norway’s deputy permanent representative in Geneva, Marita Sørheim-Rensvik, called WHO “indispensable—protecting health, upholding international humanitarian law, and ensuring life-saving care reaches people in places where few others can operate.” She urged other states to “strengthen support for WHO so it can continue delivering for those who need it most.”

Whether other major donors follow that lead remains uncertain. Many of WHO’s largest contributors face domestic budget pressures, higher defence spending and polarized debates over international institutions. Some also have political sensitivities around issues central to WHO’s work in emergencies, including sexual and reproductive health and operations in contested territories.

Tedros acknowledged those pressures, but argued that underfunding health responses carries risks beyond the countries immediately affected. “It is not charity,” he said of the appeal. “It is a strategic investment in health and security. In fact, access to health care restores dignity, stabilizes communities and offers a pathway toward recovery.”

What shortfalls mean on the ground

For communities like the one outside Omdurman, the stakes are less abstract. If the 2026 appeal is met with the same shortfalls as last year’s, WHO officials say more clinics will go dark, vaccination campaigns will stall and the quiet emergencies that unfold far from television cameras—an untreated infection, a complicated birth, a missed insulin dose—will claim more lives.

“The response to this appeal,” Tedros told member states, “will show whether we are prepared to keep health at the heart of humanitarian action, or whether we will allow the world’s most vulnerable people to be left without even the most basic care.”