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On 23 September at UN Headquarters in New York, world leaders adopted a high-level United Nations Political Declaration on universal health coverage (UHC), the most comprehensive set of health commitments ever adopted at this level.
“This declaration represents a landmark for global health and development,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General at WHO. “The world has 11 years left to make good on its sustainable development goals. Universal health coverage is key to ensuring that happens.”
He added: “Universal health coverage is a political choice: today world leaders have signaled their readiness to make that choice. I congratulate them.”
The declaration comes the day after the World Health Organization (WHO) and partners flagged the need to double health coverage between now and 2030 or leave up to 5 billion people unable to access health care.
In adopting the declaration, U.N. Member States have committed to advance towards UHC by investing in four major areas around primary health care.
These include mechanisms to ensure no one suffers financial hardship because they have had to pay for healthcare out of their own pockets and implementing high-impact health interventions to combat diseases and protect women’s and children’s health.
In addition, countries must strengthen health workforce and infrastructure and reinforce governance capacity. They will report back on their progress to the U.N. General Assembly in 2023.
“Now that the world has committed to health for all, it is time to get down to the hard work of turning those commitments into results,” said Melinda Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“We all have a role to play. Donors and country governments need to move beyond business as usual to bolster the primary health care systems that address the vast majority of people’s needs over their lifetimes,” said Gates.
On 24 September, WHO and 11 other multilateral organizations, which collectively channel one third of development assistance for health, will launch their Global Action Plan for health and wellbeing for all. The plan will ensure the 12 partners provide more streamlined support to countries to help deliver universal health coverage and achieve the health-related SDG targets.
WHAT IS UNIVERSAL HEALTH COVERAGE?
Universal health coverage means that all people have access to health services they need, when and where they need them, without financial hardship. Currently, for at least half of the people in the world this is not possible. About 100 million people are pushed into extreme poverty each year because of out-of-pocket spending on health. This must change. To make health for all a reality, we need commitment at all levels of society to ensure high-quality services to all people as close to home as possible.
