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The fate of global health does not rest on any single disease. True preparedness means pairing the fight against illness with strength in finance, climate, defense and security. The COVID-19 pandemic, which brought the world to a standstill at the start of the decade, showed that containing and neutralizing a disease is only one part of being prepared.

A recent Lancet Commission on 21st Century Global Threats to Health set out to answer the question of what major health threats humanity could face over the next 75 years, from 2025 to 2100. Rather than zooming in on individual diseases, the commission cast a wider net, looking at interconnected dangers that could threaten humanity's health and survival.

The commission identified 17 threats to humanity's future. Two of them—malicious use of artificial intelligence and nuclear conflict severe enough to trigger a global nuclear famine—carry a chance of causing human extinction before the century ends.

The other 15 threats are classified as major catastrophic risks, and each is expected to inflict more than 1 billion cumulative disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) of health loss by 2100, with air pollution, antimicrobial resistance and climate change among the most prominent.

1 billion healthy life-years at stake between the plausible worst and best scenarios. These factors ranked as the leading health threat in 154 of the 204 countries evaluated.

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