“This appeal is a call to stand with people living through conflict, displacement and disaster to give them not just services, but the confidence that the world has not turned its back on them,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
The 2026 appeal seeks to respond to 36 emergencies worldwide, including 14 “grade 3” crises requiring the highest level of organizational response at a time of stinging funding cuts as humanitarian and health financing is experiencing its sharpest decline in a decade, the agency said.
“Around one quarter of a billion people are living through humanitarian crises that have stripped away safety, shelter and access to healthcare [while] global defence spending now exceeds $2.5 trillion a year,” Tedros said at the launch in Geneva.
‘Not charity’
With the requested resources, WHO can sustain lifesaving care in the world’s most severe emergencies while “building a bridge towards peace”, said the lead agency for health response in humanitarian settings, which coordinates more than 1,500 partners across 24 crisis settings globally, ensuring that national authorities and local partners remain at the centre of emergency efforts.
“It is not charity,” the WHO chief said.
“It is a strategic investment in health and security. Access to healthcare restores dignity, stabilises communities and offers a pathway toward recovery.”
Priority response areas
As global humanitarian financing continues to contract, the 2026 appeal comes at a time of converging global pressures as protracted conflicts, escalating climate change impacts and recurrent infectious disease outbreaks drive increasing demand for health emergency support.
WHO’s priority emergency response areas will include Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Myanmar, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen.
Efforts will also address ongoing outbreaks of cholera and mpox.
‘Forced to make difficult choices’
“Renewed commitments and solidarity are urgently needed to protect and support the people living in the most fragile and vulnerable settings,” WHO said.
With shrinking funding, WHO and other humanitarian partners have been “forced to make difficult choices” to prioritise the most critical interventions, the UN agency said, adding that what remains are the most impactful activities, including:
- keeping essential health facilities operational
- delivering emergency medical supplies and trauma care
- preventing and responding to outbreaks
- restoring routine immunisation
- ensuring access to sexual and reproductive, maternal and child health services in fragile and conflict-affected settings.
Emergency services reach millions
Early, predictable investment enables WHO and partners to respond immediately when crises develop, reducing death and disease, containing outbreaks and preventing health risks from escalating into wider humanitarian and health security emergencies with far greater human and financial costs, the agency said.
In 2025, WHO and partners supported 30 million people funded through its annual emergency appeal. These resources helped to:
- deliver lifesaving vaccination to 5.3 million children
- enable 53 million health consultations
- support more than 8,000 health facilities
- facilitate the deployment of 1,370 mobile clinics
Last year, humanitarian funding fell below 2016 levels, leaving WHO and partners able to reach only one third of the 81 million people originally targeted to receive humanitarian health assistance.
Find out more about WHO’s efforts here.
