Universal Health Coverage Day

  The incidence of circulatory disorders is increasing worldwide, affecting both low- and middle-income countries and some high-income countries. There is evidence of rising incidence and prevalence rates, even among younger individuals, along with an increasing prevalence of risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity. These indicators suggest that current approaches are not effective in managing and reducing the burden of conditions affecting circulatory health. In the process of achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC), countries must determine the essential health services to be provided through health benefit packages (HBPs) that are cost-effective, taking into account criteria such as disease burden, financial risk protection, as well as social and economic impact. Circulatory diseases, as the leading cause of death and disability worldwide, pose significant financial burdens on individuals and households, due to their chronic nature, making financial ris...

The WHO “Principles of Health Benefits Packages (HBP)” provides a useful framework for countries to decide what services should be included in HBP. It further details criteria to support decision-making on HBPs, including burden of disease, availability of cost-effective interventions, financial risk protection and the social and economic impact. When considering the burden of disease criteria, defined by morbidity, mortality and disability, circulatory diseases are the number one cause of death and disability worldwide, they contribute to more than 374 million of lives lost each year. People living with diabetes are two to four times more likely to die from heart disease and CVD  is the leading cause of death for people with kidney disease. Moreover, due to their chronic nature and high cost of specialized care often needed to manage them, circulatory diseases contribute significantly to driving individuals and households into poverty when they need to pay for such services out...

Effective coverage of health services is animportant measure of UHC, and even with significant progress made in improving effective coverage in many countries over the past few decades , UHC is extremely non-uniform not only between countries but also within the same country for different diseases and there is still much work to be done to achieve truly universalcoverage . Despite the availability of a large body of knowledge and evidence on cost-effectiveinterventions that if scaled up at the primary care level would significantly contribute to reducing the health and financial burden of circulatory diseases , UHC packages often do not include interventions to address circulatory diseases . Indeed, the State of UHC Commitment Review f ound that while countries committed to UHC almost doubled between 2019 and 2021 and the majority of countries state UHC as a clear objective in their national plans and strategies, programs and interventions are generally disease- and service-sp...