First Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Day on 12 December marks anniversary of UN endorsement of UHC goal
On Monday this week, the World Health Organization announced that 6,330 people have now died from Ebola in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone—the three countries hit hardest by the epidemic still raging in West Africa. With 1,583 deaths, Sierra Leone has now overtaken Liberia as the country with the largest death toll.
“Unfortunately, what was a simple Ebola outbreak is rapidly transforming into a complex, rapid humanitarian emergency,” said Dr Rony Zachariah from Médecins Sans Frontières during a special session on the epidemic at the Union World Conference on Lung Health in Barcelona in November.
The reason, he said, is that “there is no umbrella of infection control in the general health services.” In other words, the health care system lacks the basic means to stop such infections from spreading from person to person.
The Ebola outbreak is just the latest high-profile example of what can happen when people lack access to universal health coverage. There is nothing inherent to the Ebola virus or its modes of transmission that makes a widespread epidemic inevitable after an outbreak occurs. Put simply, the epidemic that is threatening the national stability and security of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone—and has triggered panic in other countries around the world—would be inconceivable in the context of universal health coverage.
What is universal health coverage? Universal health coverage means that every person, everywhere, has access to quality healthcare services without suffering financial hardship as a consequence of becoming sick. While achieving universal health coverage is an ambitious undertaking often involving complex political negotiations and long-term financing commitment, it is by no means unattainable. As of 2010, 70 countries—including 30 of the world’s poorest countries—had passed laws intended to advance universal health coverage.
Two years ago today, member states of the United Nations unanimously endorsed universal health coverage as a policy objective and a human right. In addition to helping ensure people’s right to achieve the highest attainable level of health, this decision reflected the awareness that universal health coverage would have wide-ranging economic benefits, both for countries and for individuals and families. As it stands now, in many parts of the world, lack of access to affordable health coverage routinely traps families in a cycle of poverty that prevents their ability to work, obtain an education and participate fully in the community. For example, approximately a third of families in Africa and Southeast Asia have had to borrow money or sell their belongings to pay for health care.
In honour of this historic decision, The Union is joining over 500 other health, development and human rights organisations from more than 100 countries to mark the first-ever Universal Health Coverage Day on Friday, 12 December. Because people have a right to health. Because no one should become destitute as a consequence of illness. Because the world should never experience the horrors of another Ebola epidemic.
We join together to call on governments to do their parts to achieve universal health coverage for all people, everywhere.
Learn more at www.universalhealthcoverageday.org