Wednesday 20 Sept 2023 at 14:00-15:30 (CET) | 8:00-9:30am (EST)
The WHO Division of Data, Analytics and Delivery for Impact, WHO Division of Universal Health Coverage/Life Course and the World Bank’s Health, Nutrition and Population Global Practice is jointly organizing a technical briefing on the launch of their Universal Health Coverage Global Monitoring Report.
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 3.8 – Universal Health Coverage (UHC) – requires that all people can access essential health services without suffering financial hardship. Since 2015, its achievement is tracked jointly by The World Health Organization and the World Bank with a bi-annual Global Monitoring Report (GMR).
This event will present key findings from the upcoming report jointly published by WHO and the World Bank. This include new estimates of global and regional trends in essential health service coverage and financial hardship due to out-of-pocket health spending. Discussants will provide perspectives on the new findings, the challenges in tracking UHC, and the needed policy changes.
Please join the online event with the following details
Connection details: Technical briefing of the UHC Global Monitoring Report 2023 | Meeting ID: 945 7185 4559 | Passcode: Welcome-23
Universal Health Coverage Global Monitoring Report 2023
The 2023 report underscores the extent to which global progress has stalled towards UHC since the beginning of the SDG era in 2015, and especially in recent years. As of 2021 over 4.5 billion people – or more than half the world’s population – still lacked full coverage for essential health services. It also illustrates worsening financial hardship due to out-of-pocket health spending, which has a particularly devastating impact for those living at or near the poverty line. As of 2019, just prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, approximately 2 billion people worldwide were pushed or further pushed into poverty due to healthcare costs, including more than 300 million living in extreme poverty.
“Financial hardship due to out-of-pocket health spending is worsening: Catastrophic out-of-pocket health spending, defined as exceeding 10% of a household budget, continues to rise. More than one billion people, about 14% of the global population, experienced such large out-of-pocket payments relative to their budgets. But even small expenditures in absolute terms can be 6 devastating for low-income families; approximately 1.3 billion individuals were pushed or further pushed into poverty by such payments, including 300 million people who were already living in extreme poverty….”
