The UN General Assembly will convene three High-Level Meetings on health during its 78th session (UNGA 78) in New York in September 2023. These present a historic opportunity for world leaders to place health back on the high-level political agenda as they recommit to ending tuberculosis (TB), delivering universal health coverage (UHC) and strengthening pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response.
At this mid-point towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the world is off track to achieve the health targets by 2030. Millions of people cannot access life-saving and health-enhancing interventions. Out-of-pocket spending on health catastrophically affects over 1 billion people, pushing hundreds of millions of people into extreme poverty. The situation has worsened due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The High-Level Meetings come at a critical moment as the world recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, confronted with multiple humanitarian and climate crises. Upholding the human right to health and building equitable health systems are essential to achieve UHC, to build sustainable prevention, preparedness and response to pandemics as well as other health emergencies, and to ending epidemics such as TB.