Progress towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC) requires making difficult trade-offs. In this journal, Dr. Margaret Chan, the WHO Director-General, has endorsed the principles for making such decisions put forward by the WHO Consultative Group on Equity and UHC. These principles include maximizing population health, priority for the worse off, and shielding people from health-related financial...

    Background: Universal health coverage (UHC) is the desired goal of achieving universal access to health services without having to endure pain and financial difficulties. Multiple factors can help steer countries toward UHC. One of the most important factors is the production of valid quality evidence that can be achieved through research. The present study aimed at outlining...

Perspectives There is global consensus on the goals of universal health coverage (UHC), which has been defined as " all people receiving quality health services that meet their needs without exposing them to financial hardship in paying for them. " 1 Yet despite this consensus, it remains unclear how the global health community can achieve universal coverage. The obvious answer is to ensure tha...

A government that claims to provide universal health coverage (UHC) needs to establish that access to health services is available for the whole population for the full spectrum of services without risk of undue financial hardship. Embedded within the idea of UHC are two distinct notions. First, access to the full spectrum of health services needs to include access to preventive care through to...

BACKGROUND Globally, about 150 million people experience catastrophic healthcare expenditure services annually. Among low and middle income countries, out-of-pocket expenditure pushes about 100 million people into poverty annually. In Botswana, 83 % of the general population and 58 % of employed individuals do not have medical aid coverage. Moreover, inequity allocation of financial resources b...

Human resources for health (HRH) will have to be strengthened if universal health coverage (UHC) is to be achieved. Existing health workforce benchmarks focus exclusively on the density of physicians, nurses and midwives and were developed with the objective of attaining relatively high coverage of skilled birth attendance and other essential health services of relevance to the health Millenniu...

BACKGROUND In sub-Saharan Africa, universal health coverage (UHC) reforms have often adopted a technocratic top-down approach, with little attention being paid to the rural communities' perspective in identifying context specific gaps to inform the design of such reforms. This approach might shape reforms that are not sufficiently responsive to local needs. Our study explored how rural communit...

BACKGROUND Many low- and middle-income countries with a social health insurance system face challenges on their road towards universal health coverage (UHC), especially for people in the informal sector and vulnerable population groups or the informally employed. One way to address this is to subsidize their contributions through general government revenue transfers to the health insurance fund...

OBJECTIVE China has achieved over 96% health insurance coverage. However, universal health coverage (UHC) entails population coverage and the range of services covered and the extent to which health service costs are covered. This study aimed to determine the performance of the health insurance system in China in terms of its role in UHC and to identify challenges in the progress of UHC as perc...