Disability

Key facts

• Over 1.3 billion people, or about 16% of the world's population, live with disability.
• Persons with disabilities have 2-3 times higher mortality rates often from conditions unrelated to their disability.
• Additionally, and unfortunately, persons with disability will die up to 20 years earlier than those without disabilities from preventable conditions and inequitable access to quality care.
• Compared to non-disabled adults, adults with disabilities are more than 2-4 times as likely to have noncommunicable diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, depression and chronic respiratory diseases.
• Persons with disabilities face higher unmet health needs (e.g. cancer screening, being reached by primary care or health promotion programmes) and lower access to rehabilitation and assistive products, even in well-resourced health systems, highlighting the urgency of disability-inclusive universal health coverage.
• The number of persons with disabilities is rising as populations age and chronic conditions and injuries continue to be common.
• Persons with disability are also up to 6 times more likely to face barriers in accessing health care and up to 15 times more likely to be limited by inaccessible or unaffordable transportation.
• In the WHO European Region, 6-10 in every 100 people live with a disability, totalling at least 135 million people.
• In parts of the Region, more than 60% of people aged 65 years and older live with at least 2 chronic conditions, driving higher rehabilitation needs to maintain functional ability in older age.

Overview

Disability is not the same as a health condition. It is part of being human and an integral part of the human experience. Disability results from the interaction between a person's health condition or impairment - such as dementia, blindness or a spinal cord injury - and environmental and personal factors, including societal attitudes, inaccessible infrastructure, discriminatory policies, age and gender.

Although often referred to as a single population, the disability community is a diverse group with different experiences and needs, including with the health system.

WHO response

While many countries have made significant progress, the world is still far from ensuring that persons with disabilities can fully enjoy their right to the highest attainable standard of health. Persistent health inequities continue to limit access to quality health services and lead to poorer health outcomes. Disaggregated data to track health trends of persons with disabilities is often not collected and so governments are often unaware of the health gap experienced by persons with disabilities and the socioeconomic impact of this on social services and health systems and the families of those with disabilities.

WHO works with Member States and partners to remove barriers to health care, promote health equity, and support the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In 2022, WHO/Europe launched the WHO European framework for action to achieve the highest attainable standard of health for persons with disabilities 2022-2030.

Additionally, WHO/Europe is working to:

• strengthen health systems, by collecting good practices on disability-inclusive health services;
• advance policies that address the needs and rights of persons with disabilities; and
• develop key indicators to track the health of persons with disabilities.

To connect actors globally on this work, WHO launched the WHO Disability Health Equity Initiative in November 2025. The initiative brings together governments, organizations of persons with disabilities, academia, United Nations agencies and other partners to accelerate action towards more inclusive health systems and ensure that persons with disabilities can achieve the highest attainable standard of health.