In responses to Norheim’s editorial, this commentary offers reflections from Thailand, how the five unacceptable trade-offs were applied to the universal health coverage (UHC) reforms between 1975 and 2002 when the whole 64 million people were covered by one of the three public health insurance systems. This commentary aims to generate global discussions on how best UHC can be gradually achieve...

a recent editorial by naoki ikegami has proposed three key lessons from japan’s experience of achieving virtually universal coverage with primary healthcare services: the need to integrate the existing providers of primary healthcare services into the organised health system; the need to limit government commitments to finance hospital services and the need to empower providers of primary healt...

The World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) World Health Report 2010, “Health systems financing, the path to universal coverage,” promoted universal health coverage (UHC) as an aspirational objective for country health systems. Yet, in addition to the dimensions of services and coverage, distribution of coverage in the population, and financial risk protection highlighted by the report, the conside...

Background Ghana is implementing activities towards universal health coverage (UHC) as well as the attainment of the health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the health sector by the year 2030. Aside lack of empirical forecast of the required healthcare facilities to achieve these mandates, health workforce deficits ar...

Background: Achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) is a global imperative to ensure equitable access quality healthcare services for all individuals. A pivotal factor in this endeavor the strength and capacity of workforce. This paper examines intersection robust workforce goals UHC, with specific focus on Nigerian context.
 Methods: The delves into strengths weaknesses workforce, analy...

Thailand has achieved wide access to health services, including sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services, through two major reforms (Balabanova et al., 2013). Beginning in the early 1980s, physical barriers to care were minimised by increased investment in the health system, particularly nation-wide expansion of well-functioning primary health care (PHC) to all sub-districts, and expansion...

BACKGROUND In 2005, the World Health Assembly (WHA) of the World Health Organization (WHO) urged member states to aim at achieving affordable universal coverage and access to key promotive, preventive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative health interventions for all their citizens on the basis of equity and solidarity. Since then, some African countries, including Ghana, have taken steps to...