New Zealand paid over $876 million for the Covid-19 wage subsidy scheme so far to support more than a quarter of the country's employees affected by COVID-19. Of the 781,364 jobs are covered under the scheme, 14 percent were for self-employed workers....
In recent years, Senegal has embarked on several strategies to finance healthcare, with the risk of a certain fragmentation. Visit strategic plan for the development of universal health coverage 2013-2017 aims to cover at least 75% ...
Shamima Akhter (ThinkWell Bangladesh), Anooj Pattnaik (ThinkWell), Callum Pierce (ThinkWell), Afroja Yesmin (ThinkWell Bangladesh), Pak Trihono (ThinkWell Indonesia) In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Helal, the manager of a busy health facility in...
Nepal amends annual budget plan 2021/22. Following the revisions, an additional Rs 5 billion has been allocated for Covid-19 vaccine purchasing. For social security provisions, there have been added two new allowances: Rs 3,000 per month for families...
The draft of the General Budget of the Republic for the fiscal year 2022 prioritized an increase of funds to the Secretariat of Health to face the purchase of vaccines (from COVID-19) and the hiring of health personnel, detailed the...
Singapore provides a top-up of $200 to all Singaporean children aged between 0 and 6 years in 2021. The top-up will be added to their Child Development Account (CDA) from mid-Sep 2021. Approximately 250,000 children will receive this benefit. This top-up is part...
West Australia plans to allocate $1.9 billion to improve the capacity of the public health system, especially staffing in the upcoming 2021-22 budget. Approximately $1 billion will be directed to health and hospital services. Almost $500 million will be allocated to...
The Indonesian government has provided Rp255.3 trillion, or 9.4 percent of the total planned state expenses of Rp2,708.7 trillion, for the health sector in the 2022 State Budget draft. The health budget will be spent for the COVID-19 pandemic, the health system...
Laos has spent over LAK 15.82 billion on aiding the Lao workers who returned from Thailand since March 2020. The government assistance consists of food, transportation, state quarantine centers, and other necessities. The Lao government has cooperated with the Thai...
Laos plans to purchase additional Covid-19 vaccines in 2022 because vaccines from the COVAX initiative will be ended by this year. Currently, a total of 1,387,083 people received the first dose or 18.9% of the total population. While the second dose vaccinations...
As part of Health policy paper series, WHO Regional Office for Europe in collaboration with WHO Country Office in Ukraine published a policy brief titled “Aligning health and decentralization reform in Ukraine” (2021). Considering that Ukrainian decentralization...
Thai Cabinet approves an additional 14.5 billion baht, aiming to support the medical workers under the Covid-19 pandemic. This budget will be divided into two parts: approximately 12.7 billion baht will be provided to medical workers...
New West Africa regional document available: Recognizing that a healthy population promotes economic development, resilience, and strength, many governments have started pursuing a universal health coverage (UHC) agenda. The international community, national...
Low- and middle-income countries are developing health financing strategies to map out how they will pay for universal health coverage. This brief discusses three activities that are valuable for producing sound strategies: convening multi-sectoral committees to...
Despite strong global commitment to achieve universal health coverage (UHC), inconsistent understanding and communication about UHC hinders progress. Experience suggests that advocating for and communicating about UHC requires deliberate, tailored, context-specific...
