Pathway to a 50% reduction in premature deaths by 2050

University of BergenOct 12 2024

A team of 50 leading international experts, the Lancet Commission on Investing in Health (CIH), explored this question, resulting in clear, actionable, and achievable measures for achieving this ambitious goal worldwide. Six of the 50 commission members are affiliated with the Bergen Centre for Ethics and Priority Setting in Health (BCEPS), a Norwegian Centre of Excellence based at the University of Bergen, Norway, including BCEPS Director and Professor Ole Frithjof Norheim, BCEPS PhD Research Fellow Sarah Bolongaita, and BCEPS-affiliated researchers Angela Chang (University of Southern Denmark), Dean T. Jamison (University of California, San Francisco), Stéphane Verguet (Harvard University), and David Watkins (University of Washington).

Their report will be released on Tuesday, October 15, 2024, when CIH members will give a keynote presentation of their findings at the World Health Summit in Berlin, Germany. The report will be freely available to the public at https://globalhealth2050.org, and the presentation given at the World Health Summit on October 15, 2024, from 4 pm - 5:30 pm CET, can be viewed online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHl-BLsfNF0.

According to the authors, the "50 by 50" goal, a 50% reduction in the probability of premature death (death before age 70), can be achieved by focusing on 15 priority conditions, eight related to infectious diseases and maternal health and seven related to non-communicable diseases and injuries.

Besides the scale-up of investments and services for these 15 priority health conditions, raising taxes on tobacco can do more to reduce premature mortality than any other single health policy.

In addition, the report estimates that there is a greater than 20% chance in the next 10 years of a pandemic that kills at least 25 million people—a magnitude similar to that of the COVID-19 pandemic, making pandemic preparedness and response critical.

The Global Health 2050 report offers a pathway for high-, middle- and low-income nations to drastically improve human welfare and life expectancy by 2050.