A tibble of the 194 World Health Organization (WHO) Member States, with standard country identifiers and WHO/Pacific groupings used across DSIR analytical workflows.
Format
A tibble with 194 rows and 8 columns:
- iso3
ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code (3-letter, e.g.
"PHL").- iso2
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code (2-letter, e.g.
"PH").- m49_code
UN M49 numeric code, stored as a 3-character string with leading zeros where present (e.g.
"008"for Albania). Stored as character because some downstream APIs (notably the UN SDG API) expect the leading-zero form.- name_official
WHO official English name (e.g.
"Iran (Islamic Republic of)"). Use for formal documents and reports.- name_short
A shorter form suitable for charts and tables (e.g.
"Iran"). Equal toname_officialfor countries whose official name is already concise. See Details.- who_region
WHO region code: one of
"AFR","AMR","SEAR","EUR","EMR","WPR".- is_pic
Logical.
TRUEfor the 14 Pacific Island Country (PIC) Member States in WPR,FALSEotherwise.- wb_income_group
World Bank income classification:
"High income","Upper middle income","Lower middle income", or"Low income".NAfor Cook Islands and Niue, which are not World Bank economies. See Details for the vintage.
Source
WHO official region listing: https://www.who.int/countries
ISO 3166-1 codes and UN M49 numeric codes: UN Statistics Division https://unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49/
World Bank income classification (FY2027): https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/906519
Details
Scope. WHO has 194 Member States plus 2 Associate Members (Puerto Rico, Tokelau) and reports on additional non-Member areas (e.g. West Bank and Gaza Strip). This dataset includes only the 194 Member States. Cook Islands and Niue are full WHO Member States and are included even though they are not UN member states.
Region coverage (as of May 2025, after WHO EB156 reassignment of Indonesia from SEAR to WPR):
AFR (African Region): 47
AMR (Region of the Americas): 35
SEAR (South-East Asia Region): 10
EUR (European Region): 53
EMR (Eastern Mediterranean Region): 21
WPR (Western Pacific Region): 28
Short names. name_short differs from name_official for 13
countries where the official name is a parenthetical descriptor or is
otherwise long. Examples: "DPR Korea", "DR Congo", "Lao PDR",
"United Kingdom". These short forms follow conventions used in WHO
regional reports and OECD Health at a Glance: Asia/Pacific.
PICs. The Pacific Island Countries flag (is_pic) marks the 14
WHO Member States in the Pacific sub-region: Cook Islands, Fiji,
Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia (Federated States of), Nauru,
Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu,
and Vanuatu. Non-Member Pacific areas (e.g. New Caledonia, French
Polynesia, American Samoa) are not included in this dataset.
Income groups. wb_income_group carries the World Bank
classification of fiscal year 2027 (released 1 July 2026; based on
2025 GNI per capita, Atlas method). The classification is revised
every 1 July, so this column reflects the vintage current at the
package release date — for a historical vintage (e.g. reproducing an
older analysis), join your own copy of the World Bank OGHIST table
instead. Cook Islands and Niue are WHO Member States but not World
Bank economies and are NA.
Examples
# All WPR Member States, sorted alphabetically by short name
wpr <- who_countries[who_countries$who_region == "WPR", ]
wpr <- wpr[order(wpr$name_short), c("iso3", "name_short")]
head(wpr)
#> # A tibble: 6 × 2
#> iso3 name_short
#> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 AUS Australia
#> 2 BRN Brunei Darussalam
#> 3 KHM Cambodia
#> 4 CHN China
#> 5 COK Cook Islands
#> 6 FJI Fiji
# Filter a data frame to PIC member states
# df_pic <- subset(my_data, country_iso3 %in% who_countries$iso3[who_countries$is_pic])
# Income-group composition of each WHO region
table(who_countries$who_region, who_countries$wb_income_group)
#>
#> High income Low income Lower middle income Upper middle income
#> AFR 1 19 20 7
#> AMR 12 0 5 18
#> EMR 6 5 6 4
#> EUR 36 0 3 14
#> SEAR 0 1 6 3
#> WPR 8 0 6 12