Tell us about the Universal Health Coverage (UHC).

Question

Asked: November 6, 20212021-11-06T14:30:58+05:30 2021-11-06T14:30:58+05:30In: Economics

[Deleted User] · Answer 1 · 2021-11-06T14:38:39+05:30

Universal Health Coverage (UHC), World Bank

It is about ensuring that people have access to the health care they need without suffering financial hardship.
It is key to achieving the World Bank Group’s (WBG) twin goals of ending extreme poverty and increasing equity and shared prosperity and as such it is the driving force behind all of the WBG’s health and nutrition investments.
UHC allows countries to make the most of their strongest asset: human capital.
Health is a foundational investment in human capital and economic growth—without good health, children are unable to go to school and adults are unable to go to work. It is one of the global economy’s largest sectors and provides 50 million jobs, with the majority held by women.
Affordable quality healthcare at the community level across age groups is the key to advancing universal health coverage

India launched a national health protection scheme, Ayushman Bharat, to achieve UHC in 2018.
The mission, through its PradhanMantri Jan ArogyaYojana (PMJAY) initiative, established 150,000 health and wellness centers (HWCs) and provides health insurance coverage to 40% of the country’s population – nearly 500 million people, or roughly the equivalent of the entire population of the European Union.
In its first year of implementation, Ayushman Bharat has reached close to 3.9 million Indians who have taken advantage of cashless treatment, resulting in a savings of $1.6 billion for the benefitting families.

Gaps in healthcare infrastructure, a divergence between rural and urban geographies, an acute shortage of skilled workers, and inadequate public funding
Qualified healthcare providers are in short supply nationally and those available are mal-distributed, with marked density differences across regions.
The majority of healthcare professionals happen to be concentrated in urban areas where consumers have higher paying power, leaving rural areas underserved.
Impoverishment due to unaffordable healthcare expenditure affects 7 percent of our population, as noted even in recent national surveys.
India’s public health spending as a percentage of GDP went up by just 0.16 percentage points from 1.12% to 1.28% of GDP