Monitoring Intervention Coverage in the Context of Universal Health Coverage

“…These indicators were selected on the basis of the definition of UHC (financial risk protection and access to needed care), and importantly their availability for most countries in the world. Recently, a range of possible indicators of health service coverage has been suggested (Boerma et al, 2014), but the majority of these indicators are not presently available for most countries. We have used the indicators that are available.…”

Section: Potential Quantitative Targets For Government Spending On Hementioning

confidence: 99%

What level of domestic government health expenditure should we aspire to for universal health coverage?

McIntyre

Meheus

Røttingen

2017

HEPL

163

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Global discussions on universal health coverage (UHC) have focussed attention on the need for increased government funding for health care in many low-and middle-income countries. The objective of this paper is to explore potential targets for government spending on health to progress towards UHC. An explicit target for government expenditure on health care relative to gross domestic product (GDP) is a potentially powerful tool for holding governments to account in progressing to UHC, particularly in the context of UHC's inclusion in the Sustainable Development Goals. It is likely to be more influential than the Abuja target, which requires decreases in budget allocations to other sectors and is opposed by finance ministries for undermining their autonomy in making sectoral budget allocation decisions. International Monetary Fund and World Health Organisation data sets were used to analyse the relationship between government health expenditure and proxy indicators for the UHC goals of financial protection and access to quality health care, and triangulated with available country case studies estimating the resource requirements for a universal health system. Our analyses point towards a target of government spending on health of at least 5% of GDP for progressing towards UHC. This can be supplemented by

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“…It has been proposed that a set of tracer coverage indicators can be selected, divided into two groups -promotion and prevention; and treatment and care -and that averages of several tracer indicators should be calculated, using an approach that is similar to the composite coverage index. 22 Monitoring universal health coverage is more complex than monitoring only coverage of reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health care; indicators also need to cover cardiovascular disease, mental health, injuries, cancer and several infectious diseases, as well as financial protection. 23,24 Given that universal health coverage tracer indicators tend to be age-specific, and in some cases sex-specific, it is unlikely that a cumulative index such as co-coverage will be useful as a single summary measure.…”

Section: ‫ملخص‬mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The universal health coverage measurement exercises mentioned above [22][23][24] all stress the lack of timely, populationbased and regular information for monitoring coverage. The availability of data on reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health is greater than for other age ranges, particularly due to the increase in DHS and MICS during the MDG era.…”

Section: ‫ملخص‬mentioning

confidence: 99%