The Roadblocks to Universal Health Coverage and How NGOs Can Help Remove Them

By Pape Amadou Gaye, Chief Executive OfficerDecember 18, 2018There are two big things holding us back.en fran çaisWhy haven ’t we achieved health for all yet? Forty years ago, the global health community committed to achieving primary health care for all by 2000. But today, about half of the world ’s population still does not have full access to essential health services.Could public-private partnerships finally get us there? Last month at the Africa Health Business Symposium (AHBS) in Johannesburg, an annual event we helped sponsor, hundreds of health ministers, government officials, business representatives and health-sector stakeholders and investors from across Africa came together to discuss this.But I left chewing on a different question: How do we move from small- and mid-scale pilot partnerships between the public and private sectors to big, collaborative impact on global health?Global momentumIn Johannesburg, Dr. Aaron Motsoaledi, minister of health in South Africa, explained there ’s no medical school textbook that teaches students one treatment protocol for rich people and another for poor people. Yet, in practice, due to inequities in reach and service quality, this is what happens. It was true in 1978, it was true when we set the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and i t’s true today, as we work toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).So, why are we chasing a future that never comes? Our global agendas have led to fantastic progress since...
Source: IntraHealth International - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Leadership and Governance Policy & Advocacy Private-Sector Approaches health financing Primary Health Care Source Type: news