There is an international call for countries to ensure universal health coverage. This call has been embraced in South Africa in the form of a National Health Insurance (NHI). Other forms of health financing in South Africa include general tax revenue, direct...

Optimizing the use of existing pooled government funds for better health outcomes in India
India’s health care system underperforms its low- and middle-income peers. It has been seen that countries in South Asia with lower PPP-adjusted GDPs per capita have delivered better health outcomes than India has. And in terms of financial protection, Indian...

Thai cabinet temporarily approves cut of social security contributions for the informal sector workers
Thai cabinet has approved 60 percent reduction of contributions for informal sector workers or people who are insured under section 40 of the Social Security Act for six months, aiming for mitigating the impact of the COVID-19 situation. For more...

Bhutan earmarks Nu 3 billion to response COVID-19
The Bhutan government has earmarked a budget of Nu 3 billion to response COVID-19. This earmarked budget will be allocated to containment related expenses such as quarantine expenses, procurement of test kits, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), and...

Budget 2021: $1.4 billion allocated to New Zealand’s COVID-19 vaccination programme
New Zealand will spend $1.4 billion for COVID-19 vaccination programme. The buget has been allocated to purchasing vaccines and specialist equipment, manufacturer advance purchase agreements, technology cost to support the rollout, and other...

Niger: Validation and alignment of the national CSU strategy
On Tuesday, May 25, 2021, the workshop for consistency, consolidation and validation of the national strategy for universal health coverage (UHC) opened in the meeting room of the NGO LIBO in Liboré. The meeting, which lasted four (4) days, was organized by the DEP of...
Senegal: The technical committee for the evaluation of the CMU program validates important reports
Two items were on the agenda of this meeting of the technical committee for the evaluation of the universal health coverage program in Senegal: Pre-validation of the report on the CMU program's service billing system ; the pre-validation of the ...

Budget FY 2021-22: Covid-19 vaccination to get priority
Keeping the mass vaccination in mind, the revenue target for the next fiscal has been set Tk 389,078 crore, which is 11.02% of the GDP, according to the finance ministry and National Board of Revenue (NBR) sources. There will be Tk 10,000 crore special allocation for...

NIGER: Scoping meeting on health financing
A scoping meeting on health financing in Niger brought together experts working on the issue on a virtual platform. Below is a summary of the main points from the June 3 meeting: A presentation of the steps involved in setting up the National Health Insurance...
The Impact of Covid 19 on Subnational GovernmentFinancing and Household Financial Risk Protection in Indonesia- Health PolicyPlus
The U.S. Agency for International Development-funded Health Policy Plus (HP+) project conducted analyses to understand the impact of COVID-19 on subnational government budgets and households’ healthcare use and spending. This work was undertaken in support of the...

The Impact of Covid 19 on Subnational Government Financing and Household Financial Risk Protection in Indonesia
Covid 19 has exposed gaps in the budgetary allocations of the subnational governments in Indonesia that resulted in increase of out-pocket health expenditure and catastrophic household spending on health expenditure for health care services. A recent study by Health...

Strengthening health financing response in COVID-19
The COVID-19 war and commitment towards UHC hinge on the criticality of designing strategic health financing policies in India. The pandemic provides the window of opportunity to reflect on our health financing objectives to strengthen the health system resilience and...

Malaysia boosts healthcare funding to fight surge in COVID-19 cases
Malaysia's government will increase COVID-19 healthcare spending by another 200 million ringgit ($48.3 million) to help tackle a surge in cases during recent weeks, the state news agency reported on Saturday. The funding boost brings the government's total healthcare...

Bangladeshis’ woes deepen amid COVID 19 and lack of health coverage
Despite having one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, Bangladesh is lagging far behind in providing standard health care services to its over 166 million people, which is deepening their woes amid the coronavirus pandemic. Their budget for the health sector is...

Book Launch: Voice, Agency, Empowerment: The Handbook on Social Participation for UHC
The Handbook on Social Participation for Universal Health Coverage (UHC) will be launched on 31 May at 14:00 – 15:00 CET. WHO, UHC2030, Health System Governance Collaborative, UHC-Partnership, and PMNCH invite you to the launch of...
