MIAMI.- United Nations advocates for access to health services health quality and affordable for all people. This is one of the objectives of the International Day of Universal Health Coverage which is celebrated this December 12.
This date has been recorded since 2017 and its goal is to strengthen awareness about the need to have solid and resilient health systems. “Advocates for Universal Health Coverage are raising their voices to tell the stories of the millions of people still waiting for access to health; to defend what we have achieved so far; to call on leaders to make greater and wiser investments in the health sphere,” says the UN.
For 2023 this day will be celebrated under the motto “Health to all: It’s time to act.” In September of this year, at the United Nations High-Level Meeting on Universal Health Coverage, it was confirmed that healthy people are the foundation of healthy societies and economies, and that universal health coverage is essential to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
Health coverage figures
Universal health coverage means that everyone has access to the set of quality health services they need at the right time and place and without suffering financial hardship: it covers the entire range of health services health essential, from health promotion to prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and palliative care.
Some figures show the panorama in terms of health coverage. “The percentage of the population that is not covered by services essential health services fell by approximately 15% between 2000 and 2021, but very little progress has been made since 2015. This implies that, in 2021, some 4.5 billion people were not fully covered by essential health services,” notes the United Nations.
Additionally, according to the United Nations, “2 billion people face economic hardship due to direct health expenditures, including 344 million people living in extreme poverty.”
On the other hand, the COVID-19 pandemic set countries back even further in their progress towards universal health coverage.
The recommendation of the World Health Organization (WHO) is to reorient health systems through an approach based on primary care, “which would allow the provision of most of the essential interventions applied within the framework of universal health coverage (90 %), which could save the lives of 60 million people and increase average life expectancy worldwide by 3.7 years by 2030.”
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Source: United Nations / International Day Portal
