Addressing persistent inequalities in service coverage and deteriorating financial protection in health

Overview

Since 2015, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have driven efforts to improve health protection and care across the world. But while the health sector has made steady progress on increasing the coverage of essential health services until 2015 (SDG indicator 3.8.1), at the same time financial protection worsened as tracked by SDG indicator 3.8.2 for catastrophic health spending. Tackling these problems is therefore a defining challenge for current efforts to achieving universal health coverage (UHC) following the COVID-19 pandemic and in a time of economic contraction. The priority is to substantively reorient health systems towards primary health care (PHC) and to strengthen universality while focusing on policies which protect the poor and vulnerable.