Heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease and diabetes kill more than 40 million people a year, according to the WHO. It's the flip side of progress: as infections recede and people live longer, chronic diseases take over. Ischaemic heart disease remains the world's leading cause of death, far ahead of any infectious disease.
That's the estimate from a WHO-led study published in The Lancet in 2024, covering the half-century since the Expanded Programme on Immunization was launched in 1974. It works out to about six lives saved every minute, mostly infants. The measles vaccine alone accounts for around 60% of those lives.
According to the World Gold Council, about 216,000 tonnes of gold have been mined in all of human history. Because gold is so dense (19.3 tonnes per cubic metre), it would fit in a cube about 22 metres on each side, roughly the height of a seven-storey building. Strikingly, about two-thirds of it has been mined since 1950.