New WHO and World Bank Group report monitoring universal health coverage
A World Health Organization and World Bank Group report launched on 12 June shows that 400 million people do not have access to essential health services and 6% of people in low- and middle-income countries are tipped into or pushed further into extreme poverty because of health spending.
The report, Tracking Universal Health Coverage, is the first of its kind to measure health service coverage and financial protection to assess countries’ progress towards universal health coverage (UHC). Implementing UHC is a Target within the proposed post-2015 Development Goals.
A commitment to equity is at the heart of UHC. As more countries make commitments to universal health coverage, one of the major challenges they face is how to track progress.
This is the first in a series of annual reports that WHO and the World Bank Group will produce on tracking progress towards UHC across countries. The report was supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Japanese Ministry of Health.
The report looked at global access to essential health services – including family planning, antenatal care, skilled birth attendance, child immunization, antiretroviral therapy, tuberculosis treatment, and access to clean water and sanitation – in 2013, and found that at least 400 million people lacked access to at least one of these services.
The report also found that, across 37 countries, 6% of the population was tipped or pushed further into extreme poverty ($1.25/day) because they had to pay for health services out of their own pockets. When the study factored in a poverty measure of $2/day, 17% of people in these countries were impoverished, or further impoverished, by health expenses.
WHO and the World Bank Group recommend that countries pursuing universal health coverage should aim to achieve a minimum of 80% population coverage of essential health services, and that everyone everywhere should be protected from catastrophic and impoverishing health payments.
The WHO Kobe Centre has translated the executive summary of the report into Japanese.