The world is currently managing seven simultaneous pandemics and epidemics. 

The visualization above shows a chronological arrangement of ongoing disease outbreaks compiled from the WHO, The Lancet, UNAIDS, the CDC, and multiple other public health authorities. 

It was gathered from Wikipedia as of May 29, 2026. 

TL;DR

• Seven epidemic and pandemic events are simultaneously active as of 2026
• HIV/AIDS has killed 45 million people as of 2026 and remains the deadliest ongoing pandemic in the world by total death toll

The Full Picture

The oldest entry is the seventh cholera pandemic, which has been running since 1961 (65 years of continuous pandemic status). 

The El Tor strain that drives it kills between 21,000 and 143,000 people every year, with millions dead in total as of 2026. 

HIV/AIDS sits alongside it (45 million deaths as of 2026, active since 1981). 

That is more deaths than every other entry in the table combined. 

It has been producing roughly a million deaths a year for four decades and has largely disappeared from mainstream global health headlines outside specialist circles. 

The dataset documents what the news cycle does not: HIV/AIDS is the deadliest ongoing pandemic in the world, and it is still running.

Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)  has been on the ongoing outbreak list since 2012. In 14 years, it has killed 959 people, as of March 30, 2026. 

That figure is low enough to seem manageable, but MERS kills approximately 35% of the people it infects, one of the highest case fatality rates of any known human pathogen. 

It remains monitored not because of what it is doing now, but because of what it could do if it evolved to achieve more efficient human-to-human transmission. The 959 deaths represent successful containment, not low inherent risk.

New and Growing

The 2023-2026 Mpox epidemic has recorded 812 deaths, primarily in Africa.

The WHO declared it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern for the second time in August 2024, driven by clade Ib (a more severe strain than the variant that caused the 2022 international outbreak). 

The 2024-2025 Sudanese cholera epidemic has killed 9,224 people across Sudan, South Sudan, and Chad. 

It is the second cholera entry in the data, a regional crisis severe enough to warrant separate classification from the background global pandemic.

The newest entry is the 2026 Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, with 264 deaths recorded. 

DRC has experienced at least 14 Ebola outbreaks since the virus was first identified there in 1976. The most severe (the 2018-2020 outbreak) killed more than 3,400 people. 

What about Malaria? 

Malaria is not currently on the data, and it kills approximately 600,000 people annually, compared to tuberculosis, which kills approximately 1.3 million. 

Those are classified as endemic rather than epidemic. 

What sits in the table is the additional layer, the events that have triggered formal epidemic or pandemic classifications requiring specific emergency response. 

They sit atop an endemic baseline that is itself enormous.

ELI5 

Right now, the world is dealing with seven different disease outbreaks at the same time. The oldest one (cholera) has been spreading since 1961. HIV/AIDS has killed 45 million people and is still going. A new Ebola outbreak just started in Africa in 2026. COVID-19 is still counted as active. None of these seven outbreaks has officially ended. Most people only know about one or two of them.

Source:  

Wikipedia  (World Health Organization, The Lancet, UNAIDS, European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, Outbreak News Today, Médecins Sans Frontières, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).