Luxembourg

Luxembourg is one of the founding members of the Universal Health Coverage Partnership. This innovative partnership supports 115 countries in fostering policy dialogue for strategic planning and health systems governance, developing health financing strategies and supporting their implementation, and enabling effective development cooperation in countries. The achievement of universal health coverage is the overarching goal of Luxembourg's health strategy. Through the Partnership, Luxembourg directly supports six of its partner countries:

• Burkina Faso
• Cabo Verde
• Lao People's Democratic Republic
• Mali
• Niger
• Senegal

Luxembourg supports the UHC Partnership

Ten countries in the African Region were supported by the Partnership to review and update their national health policies and strategic plans in 2021. These include Congo, Eritrea, Gambia, Liberia, Mali, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Seychelles and Zambia.

Rwanda and South Sudan each conducted their respective annual joint health sector reviews and identified future policy directions.

Health insurance reforms and other prepayment mechanisms mainly targeting vulnerable populations were implemented in Chad, Comoros, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, South Africa, Togo, Uganda and Zambia. The Rwanda Community Based Health Insurance Implementation and Sustainability Plan 2021-2030 was developed and validated.

Supporting acute emergency response operations

The WHO Health Emergencies Programme (WHE) works with countries and partners to prepare for, prevent, respond to and recover from all hazards that create health emergencies, including disasters (natural or human-made), disease outbreaks and conflicts.

Funding from Luxembourg has helped to build core capacity to detect disease outbreaks; develop standards to manage high-threat pathogens; respond to health emergencies in crisis countries; and build the capacity in countries to prepare for health emergencies.

Luxembourg has also been a strong supporter to WHO's Contingency Fund for Emergencies (CFE), having made yearly contributions. The CFE allows WHO to respond immediately to disease outbreaks and humanitarian crises. The ability to respond quickly, in as little as 24 hours, can stop a health emergency from spiralling out of control.

WHO works with the Luxembourg Institute of Health’s Clinical and Applied Virology, Infectious Diseases Research Unit as the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Measles Infections. It is one of the three WHO regional reference laboratories for measles and rubella in the WHO European Region.

The Luxembourg Institute of Health provides expertise, knowledge sharing and support to national measles and rubella labs in 22 countries in the region, in detecting and characterizing circulating measles and rubella viruses.

Thanks to collaboration with the WHO Measles and Rubella Laboratory Network, Luxembourg enhances disease surveillance capacity and monitoring the efforts toward measles and rubella elimination.

There are nearly 1.2 billion adolescents (10- 19 years old) worldwide. In some countries, adolescents make up as much as a quarter of the population. While most adolescent health problems are preventable or treatable, adolescents face multiple barriers in accessing health care and information. WHO is working to support Member States to create transformative outcomes for the world's 1.2 billion adolescents and generations to come, through committing to urgently scale up efforts in service delivery, financing and governance. A new report, Adolescent Health, The Missing Population in Universal Health Coverage, by WHO and partners, outlines how policymakers can act on service delivery, financing and governance.

Polio Eradication: PM of Luxembourg Xavier Bettel commits to Global Health at the 2016 Global Citizens Festival

Luxembourg is a long-term supporter and the second-largest per capita donor to polio eradication.Its total contribution to the programme exceeds US$ 20 million. The goal of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative is to complete the eradication and containment of polio viruses, so that no child ever again suffers paralytic poliomyelitis.

At the Global Citizen Festival in 2016, Luxembourg's Prime Minister, Xavier Bettel, voiced his commitment to eradicate polio. Luxembourg pledged to give €500,000 annually until 2023 and provided funds of up to €500,000 for outbreak response to eradicate polio. Luxembourg continues its commitment to polio-eradication efforts. Rotary International presented Prime Minister Bettel, with its prestigious Polio Champion Award in November 2017. Grand Duc Henri of Luxembourg and former Prime Minister Jean-Paul Juncker have also received the award.

The Healthier Kosovo project is financed by the Government of Luxembourg and implemented by WHO, the UN Development Programme and UN Volunteers. It aims to address environmental health issues by strengthening the capacities of national institutions for air pollution and health. Several awareness-raising workshops and trainings have been hosted with the Ministry of Health, most recently using WHO’s AirQ+ software to conduct an environmental health impact assessment.