In 2012 every WHO member state agreed to cut premature death from the four big diseases a quarter by 2025. We read all 185 economies' own numbers: the median cut is 11%, 21 hit the target — and in 29, the risk went up

In May 2012 the World Health Assembly — every WHO member state — adopted a single number as the headline of the global fight against noncommunicable disease: a 25% relative cut, by 2025, in the chance of dying between the ages of 30 and 70 from the four biggest NCDs — cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory illness. It became known as "25×25," measured against a 2010 baseline and written into WHO's 2013–2020 action plan. The deadline has now arrived. We pulled the series that tracks it — WHO's estimate of the unconditional probability of premature NCD death, carried by the World Bank as SH.DYN.NCOM.ZS, updated 13 July 2026, latest data year 2021 ^mmodeled — and kept every economy with a value in both the 2010 baseline year and 2021. That is 185 in all. These are modeled estimates: most countries lack the complete death registration to observe the figure directly. ^mmodeled The world as a whole went from a 20.0% chance to 18.3% — a relative cut of 8.4%, a drop of 1.7 percentage points, roughly a third of the pledged pace. By 2021, eleven of the fifteen target years had elapsed. At that mark, 21 of the 185 economies had already reached a 25% cut, and 44 were at least on the straight-line pace needed to arrive by 2025 — that is, had banked 11/15ths of the reduction by year eleven (a slightly different, and slightly larger, group than the 43 whose compound trend, projected forward, lands at 25% by the deadline). The median economy had cut its risk 10.6%. 155 improved; in 29, the 2021 risk was higher than in 2010. ^mmodeled

The single vantage most desks would take — the global average, down "only" 8% — hides where the shortfall concentrates. Read country by country against each economy's own filing, a cluster surfaces that no aggregate shows. Among the seven most populous economies, six cut their premature-NCD risk: China by 18% (19.4% to 15.9%), Brazil 17%, Indonesia 16%, Pakistan 9%, the United States 6%, Nigeria 3%. India moved the other way — up 4%, from 22.6% to 23.6% — the only one of the seven to end higher than it started. ^mmodeled The obvious suspect is the pandemic, which lands inside the 2020–2021 window. It does not carry the finding. Measured to 2019, before COVID, 35 economies were already moving backward, and 23 of the 29 that ended 2021 higher than 2010 were already rising by 2019. India's climb — to 23.7% by 2019 — predates the pandemic entirely. The backsliding began before COVID, not with it: a pre-pandemic trend, not a 2020 artifact. ^mmodeled The economies posting the largest cuts mostly started high and had the most room to fall: the former Soviet states of Central Asia (Uzbekistan 37.8% to 24.6%, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan), alongside Maldives, Oman, Qatar and Albania. Project each economy's own 2010–2021 trajectory forward at its compound rate and 43 land at the full 25% cut by 2025 — one fewer than the 44 that already sit on the simpler straight-line pace, and, either way, a projection of their own trend rather than a promise the last four years will keep it. ^mmodeled

A relative target is hardest on countries that already sit low, and that shapes the "risers" list. The United Arab Emirates shows the steepest backslide by percentage — up 45% — but that is 8.0% to 11.6%, a move of 3.6 points off one of the lowest baselines on the panel; with so little headroom, a small absolute change swings the ratio hard. Rank the risers by their starting level and several thin out. The estimates also carry real uncertainty: a one-point move for a country like India sits within plausible modeling noise, and eleven of fifteen years is not the last word — a country can accelerate late. A distinct, later goal runs alongside it: SDG target 3.4, adopted in 2015, calls for a one-third cut in premature NCD mortality by 2030 against a 2015 baseline — a separate commitment on its own clock, not a rewrite of 25×25. External accountability reads land in the same place — PAHO found only five countries in the Americas on track; The Lancet put the decade's global gain at about 1.5 points. What survives every caveat is the central tendency: the world cut roughly a third of what it promised, the median economy about 11%, and a real group — India among them — did not improve at all.

**View from a ministry that started high:** a country at 30-plus percent in 2010 had a long way to fall, and a steep cut there may owe as much to early, broad gains as to sustained targeted policy — which of the two the mortality series alone cannot resolve ^sspeculative. **View from a ministry that started low:** at 8% a 25% relative cut is a smaller absolute drop than a high-burden neighbor must make — though a country near the floor may find the deaths that remain harder to prevent, a diminishing-returns argument these numbers can't settle ^sspeculative. Both read the same target honestly — which is part of why a single global percentage flatters some and buries others. ^mmodeled