Science and global cooperation have transformed human health over the past century, and the world must protect and strengthen both, the World Health Organization (WHO) urged on World Health Day 2026, according to a WHO news release. Under this year’s theme — “Together for health. Stand with science.” — WHO is launching a year-long campaign to rally governments, institutions, and communities around evidence-based action. The global maternal mortality rate has fallen by more than 40% since 2000, and under-five deaths have dropped by over 50%, gains that would have been impossible without scientific progress and international collaboration.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said science is “one of humanity’s most powerful tools,” pointing to vaccines, penicillin, MRI machines, and genomic mapping as breakthroughs that have saved billions of lives. Global immunization efforts alone have saved over 154 million children in the past 50 years, with the measles vaccine accounting for more than 90 million of those. Yet health threats are growing — driven by climate change, environmental degradation, geopolitical tensions, and emerging disease risks — making scientific investment and cooperation more urgent than ever.
WHO has been at the centre of many of these advances: coordinating rapid virus identification during the 2003 SARS outbreak, developing alcohol-based hand-rub formulations that now protect health workers worldwide, and setting global air and water quality standards that prevent millions of infections and deaths each year. Chief Scientist Dr Sylvie Briand warned that without rigorous science, health decisions risk being driven by bias and misconception — “toward treatments that fail us or even place us in harm’s way.”
To mark World Health Day, WHO and the G7 French Presidency are convening a One Health Summit in Lyon from 5-7 April, bringing together heads of state, scientists, and community leaders. The WHO Global Forum of Collaborating Centres from 7-9 April will connect representatives from over 800 academic and research institutions in more than 80 countries. WHO is calling on all governments and institutions to keep science at the heart of health policy and ensure evidence-based approaches guide decisions at every level.
