Nature Communications · 18 August 2026 · From issue 23
Tracking funding disparities in global health aid with machine learning
Non-communicable diseases got only 2.5% of health aid despite causing 59.5% of lost healthy years worldwide.
Finn Stürenburg, Kerstin Forster et al.
A computer program read details on 3.7 million health aid projects from 2000 to 2022. Together these projects were worth about 332 billion dollars. The program sorted each project by disease type and compared aid amounts to how much harm each disease actually causes. It found that non-communicable diseases like heart disease and diabetes cause almost 60 percent of the world's lost healthy years. Yet these diseases got only 2.5 percent of health aid money. Some regions, including Central Africa, parts of South Asia, and West Africa, showed the biggest mismatches between aid and need.
Share of global lost healthy years caused by non-communicable diseases, compared to the share of health aid they received.
Global aid data analysis only, cannot explain funder decisions.
Integrity screen: passed (3 checks) Checked 19 August 2026. Retraction record: none. DOI resolves at doi.org. Metadata record found (Nature Communications). Read the source
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