Video: Universal Health Coverage: everyone, everywhere
WHO/Europe has launched a new programme to work with eastern European and central Asian (EECA) countries to monitor financial protection. Led by the WHO Barcelona Office for Health Systems Financing, the programme responds to requests from national statistical
offices in EECA countries for support for financial protection – a key dimension of universal health coverage.
The programme’s first meeting took place in February 2022, with the participation of national statistical offices, health ministries, independent national experts and WHO country offices from the 12 target countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus,
Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Republic of Moldova, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
The monitoring programme marks an important milestone for WHO/Europe’s work on financial protection because it addresses a gap in evidence in these countries.
An equity-sensitive approach to monitoring financial protection
The goals of universal health coverage – to ensure that everyone can use the quality health services they need without experiencing financial hardship – are set out in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and WHO’s European Programme
of Work 2020–2025, “United Action for Better Health in Europe.”
WHO/Europe’s equity-sensitive approach to monitoring financial protection has 2 key features:
- developing and using metrics that address the limitations of the SDG indicator of financial protection (SDG 3.8.2) by accounting for people’s capacity to pay for health care and giving visibility to people in poverty who are exposed to out-of-pocket payments; and
- working with countries to find ways to reduce out-of-pocket payments for the people most in need of financial protection first.
Building a network of national experts
Extending this equity-sensitive approach to EECA countries, the WHO Barcelona Office is building a network of national experts to measure the incidence of catastrophic and impoverishing out-of-pocket payments for health care using global and regional
metrics and data from national household budget surveys. Catastrophic payments are those that exceed the threshold of a household’s ability to pay; impoverishing payments are those that push households below the poverty line or basic needs line.
The network of experts will also produce up-to-date information on the design of coverage policies – national choices about who has access to which publicly financed health services, at what level of copayment and under what conditions. This will
help them identify gaps in coverage and how they relate to financial hardship or unmet need for health services.
The network will then develop context-specific policy recommendations to strengthen affordable access to health services, including medicines, in each country.
Later this year, the network will meet at a workshop in Tbilisi, Georgia, to share key findings and agree on recommendations for policy