Make universal health coverage and financial protection for health a national priority!
Universal Health Coverage Day 2024
Observed on 12 December
An elderly woman getting her blood pressure checked in Bagmati Province, Nepal
Health: It's on the government!
नागरिकको स्वास्थ्य: राज्यको दायित्व
Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Day 2024 focuses on the role of financial protection in accelerating progress towards UHC. Financial protection ensures that people don’t fall into poverty because of having to pay out-of-pocket for health costs. Over the last 20 years, financial protection has progressively deteriorated, with 2 billion people experiencing financial hardship and 1.3 billion people pushed into poverty due to health spending. This means that mothers may miss out on the life-saving intervention they need for themselves or their children, people are not diagnosed and treated for noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) on time, with delays in early treatment leading to severe, untreatable or life-threatening illnesses.
Healthier populations build communities that are more resilient, productive, peaceful and prosperous. Health for all is a pre-requisite to achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs). In spite of numerous high-level political commitments to achieve UHC by 2030, over half of the world’s population still has no access to essential health services.
UHC will remain elusive until governments adequately invest in protecting people – particularly the most vulnerable among us – from impoverishing health spending.
This UHC Day, WHO calls for urgent action to put financial protection measures in place.
Latest news
Universal Health Coverage Partnership: What is it?
Fact Sheets
News from Nepal
Global News
Related publications
Measurement of self-reported forgone health care and its reasons: towards tackling unmet health care...
Access to needed health services remains a central challenge for achieving universal health coverage, with unmet health care need reflecting gaps in service...
Emergency ready primary health care framework
Health emergencies are increasingly frequent, complex and interconnected—and their impacts are felt first at the level of primary health care.The...
Turning emergency readiness from principle into practice at the frontline of primary health care.The Emergency Ready Primary Health Care (ERPHC) Operational...
Tracking rehabilitative care expenditure under the System of Health Accounts 2011 provides complementary technical guidance to support countries in monitoring...
Rooted in partnership, growing through challenge: The Banyan Framework for Health and Well-Being in the...
The Banyan Framework for Health and Well-Being in the WHO South-East Asia Region (2026–2028) sets out a clear, country-focused path to protect recent...
Global report on the use of sugar-sweetened beverage taxes, 2025
This report provides a global assessment of taxes applied to sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs). It describes and qualitatively compares their design and...
Related resources