Microproduct data guidebeginner

WHO Global Health Observatory

Official country health indicators for building life-expectancy, mortality, and coverage comparison tools.

Start the guide Open official source

At a glance

Difficulty
Beginner — comfortable for a first prototype
Size
Medium · ≤1 GB
Formats
JSON, XML
Access
API or Download
API key
Not required
Provider
World Health Organization
Updates
Annual
Data terms
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 with WHO additional terms

From source to product signal

Test a product idea in four steps

The GHO OData API returns WHO health indicators by country and year. Start with life expectancy at birth for one country. Values can lag, sex and age splits differ by indicator, and WHO forbids implying endorsement.

1

Check the setup

  • Python 3.10 or newer
  • A notebook environment such as Jupyter or Google Colab
  • An internet connection
2

Access the data

  1. 1.Read the GHO OData examples and the data.who.int terms, including CC BY 4.0 and no-endorsement rules.
  2. 2.Request one indicator filtered to one country and a recent year.
  3. 3.Keep indicator code, SpatialDim, TimeDim, and NumericValue.
Open official source
3

Run the Python example

Install the packages, then run the notebook cell.

python -m pip install pandas requests

import pandas as pd
import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://ghoapi.azureedge.net/api/WHOSIS_000001",
    params={"$filter": "SpatialDim eq 'USA'", "$top": "20"},
    timeout=30,
)
response.raise_for_status()
observations = pd.DataFrame(response.json()["value"])
print(
    observations[
        ["IndicatorCode", "SpatialDim", "TimeDim", "Dim1", "NumericValue"]
    ].head()
)
4

Test a useful signal

Chart U.S. life expectancy at birth from GHO

Test whether one WHO indicator can power a bounded national trend card.

  1. 01Keep year, sex dimension, and NumericValue for WHOSIS_000001 in the United States.
  2. 02Plot the series and report missing years before interpreting a change.
  3. 03Attribute WHO under CC BY 4.0 and state that the chart is not a WHO-endorsed product.

Dataset details

World Health Organization is an intergovernmental source. Last verified 2026-08-18. Temporal coverage: indicator series with country-specific starts.

Theme

Demographics & Development

Domains

Public HealthInternational StatisticsDemographics

Data types

Time SeriesTabular

Tasks

International ComparisonTrend AnalysisPolicy Monitoring

Geography

Global

Formats

JSONXML

Provider

World Health Organization

Data terms

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 with WHO additional terms