Halfway to the 2030 deadline for Universal Health Coverage, the world is severely off track. Nearly half of the global population lacks access to essential health services, with one in four facing devastating healthcare costs
The world is approaching a global deadline--the year 2030--to evaluate the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals and ensure everyone, everywhere has access to essential healthcare. Yet, the progress looks seriously off pace. According to the latest, nearly half the world's population, 4.5 billion people, still lacked universal access to crucial health services as of 2021. Worse still, one in four people faced crushing healthcare costs that can push them into poverty.
Thus, it limits the coverage of essential services among the poorest and rural populations across the world. The limited public funds are primarily siphoned towards supply of expensive diagnostics, vaccines and selective interventions as dominated by powerful lobbies, crippling the public health systems, and indirectly promoting the growth of unregulated, profit-making private systems.
There is a need to organize healthcare services as a public good and not as a commodity purchased from a spectrum of providers from free-market mechanisms. The governments should take the idea of 'Universal Health Coverage' cautiously and reshape it as 'universal access' to affordable, public sector driven, accessible and decentralized services to ensure financial protection of even the poorest and most vulnerable billons of the world.
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