Toward Universal Health Coverage Post-COVID-19
2021
During the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, advancement toward universal health coverage will become more difficult for many countries, demonstrating that locally led priority setting is urgently needed to provide health services with appropriate financial protection to all. Resources are limited and no national constituency can provide an unlimited number of services to their whole population in a sustainable manner, so rationing and setting priorities for the selection of interventions to be included in a defined package of services is critical.
This article discusses how packages of essential health services can be developed in resource-constrained settings, and how experts and the public can decide on principles and criteria, use a comprehensive array of analytical methods, and choose which services to be provided free of charge. It illustrates these main steps while drawing on a recently conducted exercise of revising the national essential health services package in Ethiopia, which is compared with examples from other countries that have defined their essential benefits packages.
Toward Universal Health Coverage Post-COVID-19
Source:
Verguet S, Hailu A, Eregata GT et al. Toward Universal Health Coverage in the Post-COVID-19 Era. Nature Medicine 2021; 27 (3): 380-387. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-021-01268-y