The World Health Organization has appealed for $633 million to respond to health emergencies across its Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) in 2026, warning that the region continues to face the highest concentration of humanitarian needs globally. An additional $56 million is required to sustain WHO’s Regional Health Emergencies Programme, supporting preparedness, disease surveillance, emergency coordination, and the rapid scaling-up of health operations as crises evolve.
The funding request is regional, not global, and applies exclusively to the WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Region—an administrative grouping that includes 22 countries across the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of South and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, and Somalia.
Nearly 115 million people across the region are expected to require humanitarian assistance in 2026—close to half of the world’s people classified as being in need of humanitarian aid, underscoring the scale of vulnerability concentrated within the EMR. Many live in conflict-affected and fragile settings marked by displacement, high maternal mortality, child malnutrition, and outbreaks of preventable diseases such as cholera, measles, dengue, and circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus.
Despite funding pressures, WHO responded to 62 disease outbreaks across 19 EMR countries in 2025, while also supporting emergency responses to conflicts, natural disasters, and complex humanitarian crises. Addressing the WHO Executive Board in Geneva, Hanan Balkhy urged stronger investment in humanitarian health action, cautioning that without financing aligned to actual needs, life-saving responses risk being constrained by funding limits rather than driven by humanitarian necessity.
