2025 Health Radar: 6 Priorities, Issues and New Developments

In 2025, the global health landscape faces a mix of longstanding challenges and emerging threats, all of which are becoming increasingly complex and interconnected.

As the healthcare landscape continues to evolve, staying ahead of emerging trends and challenges is crucial. At Assist360, we remain at the forefront of global health, supported by our extensive medical network to address the most pressing health issues for our clients.

Let’s take a look at the key health issues shaping 2025.

1. Anti-microbial resistance

Based on estimates across 204 countries and territories, new forecasts from the Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance (GRAM) Project suggest that bacterial antimicrobial resistance (AMR) will cause 39 million deaths between 2025 and 2050. That’s three deaths every minute.

Anti-microbial resistance continues to grow as a major concern for healthcare. Antimicrobials – including antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals, and antiparasitics – are used to prevent and treat infectious diseases in humans, animals and plants.

Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites no longer respond to antimicrobial medicines, making them harder to treat. Antimicrobial resistance is a natural process that happens over time, but the excessive and inappropriate use of antibiotics has accelerated the emergence and spread of anti-microbial resistance.

Though antimicrobial resistance is a global problem, low-and middle-income countries are most affected, as poverty and inequality can further drive infection. Infection prevention and control (IPC) – effective sanitation and hygiene – is essential in the fight against antimicrobial resistance because it reduces the need for the medications in the first place.

2. Communicable diseases

“The COVID-19 crisis may have passed, but a harsh lesson remains: the world is woefully unprepared for the next pandemic,” said António Guterres, UN Secretary-General, on the on the International Day of Epidemic Preparedness at the end of 2024.

2025 marks five years since COVID-19, which caused more than 14 million deaths worldwide. In December 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) initiated negotiations for a global pandemic treaty aimed at enhancing prevention, preparedness, and response. However, by May 2024, member states had not reached a consensus, leading to continued discussions without a finalised agreement. There is hope that a treaty will be finalised in 2025.

Recent outbreaks, including Marburg virus, Mpox, and avian influenza, highlight global health system vulnerabilities. The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board reported 17 outbreaks in 2024 alone, stressing the urgent need for cohesive strategies. The Global Health Security Index, which measures the capacities of 195 countries to prepare for epidemics and pandemics, shows that all 195 countries remain dangerously unprepared for future pandemics, with little improvement since 2019, despite COVID-19 lessons.

The world remains underprepared for the next pandemic.

Major infectious diseases and epidemics have devastating impacts on human lives, economies, and social development – particularly in vulnerable communities. Awareness, knowledge-sharing, education, and advocacy at a global scale are essential for effective epidemic prevention and response at all levels, and international cooperation and multilateralism are key to this.

3. Climate change and health

January 2025 was the warmest January on record according to leading international datasets. This, after 2024 was named the warmest year on record.

The effects of climate change on health are significant. Climate disasters are contributing to humanitarian disasters, posing direct threats to health and causing injuries, fatalities, and infrastructure issues. Changing weather patterns are also exacerbating levels of both communicable and non-communicable diseases. Temperature and precipitation changes enhance the spread of vector-borne diseases such as malaria, while poor air quality worsens respiratory conditions. The World Economic Forum (WEF) named extreme weather events as the second most pressing global risk in 2025.

According to the WEF, climate change is likely to cause an additional 14.5 million deaths and $12.5 trillion in economic losses worldwide by 2050. Climate change will worsen global health inequities, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations such as women, youth, the elderly, and low-income communities. Regions like Africa and southern Asia face heightened risks due to resource limitations, inadequate infrastructure, and insufficient medical equipment, making adaptation to climate-related challenges even more difficult.

Tackling the effects of climate change on health will require a twofold approach: preparing healthcare systems for the impact of climate change and mitigating climate change itself. Much like pandemic preparedness, policy makers must begin to envision and prepare for a future that is imminent.

4. Mental health

According to a major study conducted by researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of Queensland, one out of every two people in the world will develop a mental health disorder in their lifetime. Mental disorders were identified by the WHO as the leading cause of disability in the world.

“Mental health should be a key priority in 2025 due to its growing burden, impact on physical health, and economic consequences,” shares Dr Francesca Harper, Assist360 Senior Medical Doctor. “There is also increased societal awareness and demand for better mental health resources.”

Despite this, mental health care remains drastically underfunded, with countries allocating less than 2% of healthcare budgets to it. In many regions, there is only one psychiatrist per 200,000 people, and access to affordable psychiatric medication is limited, especially in low-income countries. As a result, many people with mental health conditions go untreated, with barriers such as poor service quality, low mental health literacy, stigma, and discrimination preventing them from getting help.

Dr Harper continues: “Mental health is interconnected with physical health, influencing the control of many chronic conditions. Untreated mental health conditions can lead to poor health outcomes, increased healthcare costs, and lower quality of life. Geopolitical tensions, economic uncertainty, and climate anxiety are also exacerbating psychological strain worldwide.”

Mental health has shifted from a personal concern to a societal necessity, which will continue to reshape consumer expectations and fuel innovation across various industries, including healthcare.

5. Political shifts

National governance directly impacts global health, shaping access, quality and response. In 2025, political actions – particularly those of United States president Donald Trump – are already significantly influencing the healthcare landscape.

At the start of his term, President Trump instituted a 90-day pause in new foreign assistance obligations and disbursements, pending review of all foreign aid programmes. This measure effectively halted implementation of US global health efforts in low and middle-income countries around the world, removing healthcare access for millions of individuals.

In his first hours of presidency, Trump also signed an executive order to withdraw the United States from the WHO. This action will undoubtably impact the success of the WHO going forward in 2025: the institution will face financial strain (the US contributes 18% to overall funding) and the global public health system will feel the consequences of broken communication and surveillance, impeding the WHO’s ability to track diseases. Argentina’s president Javier Milei followed in Trump’s footsteps by announcing that Argentina would also be leaving the WHO in 2025.

The move away from multilateralism has the potential to further fragment international healthcare efforts, hindering cooperation on issues like disease prevention, vaccine distribution, and healthcare access, ultimately exacerbating global health disparities.

6. Digital transformation

According to the results of a survey conducted by the Deloitte US Center for Health Solutions, accelerated digital transformation is the issue most likely to impact global health systems in 2025.

While healthcare lags behind industries like retail and finance in adopting digital technologies, many organisations have recently started integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, predictive analytics, and cloud computing into their systems to enhance their efficiency, productivity, and overall operations. The NHS in England, for example, is embarking on a landmark trial to use AI tools to catch breast cancer cases earlier. This will help them to speed up diagnoses and increase capacity for radiologists.

The healthcare industry has started integrating advanced digital technologies like Artificial Intelligence into their systems.

While the swift adoption of digital transformation in the healthcare industry will no doubt shape the years to come, the use of AI comes with potential risks. These include patient harm from errors, data privacy concerns, and the reinforcement of social and health inequalities. Bias in datasets can lead to inaccurate diagnostics, as seen in AI-driven pulse oximeters misreading oxygen levels in darker-skinned patients. Additionally, underrepresented groups in AI datasets may face unequal access to healthcare benefits. There is an urgent need for ethical and inclusive AI development.

Prepared for 2025

In 2025 – as can be said for most years – the global health landscape faces myriad challenges that demand urgent action on a global scale. Make sure your staff and company are covered by a medical assistance partner that that’s prepared to handle complex cases in a variety of environments.

Assist360 has an extensive global network across Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and Latin America, and the expertise to handle the most complex of medical situations.

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