Responding to the health financing emergency: immediate measures and longer-term shifts

Overview

This guidance paper provides a set of health financing-related actions and analytics for countries to consider as they respond to rapid changes in funding and set new directions for their systems to ensure sustained progress towards UHC. It outlines immediate actions, including protecting essential services, reprioritizing budgets, integrating previously donor-funded programs and addressing inefficiencies, as well as rapid analytics to guide those decisions. The paper then sets out medium- to long-term reforms across revenue raising, public financial management, pooling, strategic purchasing and priority setting to build more sustainable, domestically driven health financing systems. It also highlights the analytical capacities countries need to support these reforms and sustain progress toward universal health coverage.