Lessons from Botswana

MSH and over 60 Organizations Call on Delegates to Support Universal Health Coverage at the Botswana High Level Dialogue on Health in the Post-2015 Development Agenda

March 04, 2013

March 4, 2013 - MSH joined over 60 civil society organizations in supporting universal health coverage in a sign-on letter to delegates meeting this week in Botswana at the High Level Dialogue on Health in the Post–2015 Development Agenda.
The organizations called on delegates to ensure that UHC is included in the post–2015 development framework as a way to bring an end to preventable deaths and realize the right to health for all. The groups also asked delegates to ensure that the “unfinished business” of the unmet health Millennium Goals is recommitted to in the next framework.
The groups asked the delegates to recognize:

• The importance of addressing UHC in a way which sustainably improves population health outcomes for all and overcomes health inequalities; and,
• The unifying opportunity of UHC, which includes meeting the health needs of the population while providing measurable, reliable, and specific indicators covering issues of equity of access to both health services and financial risk protection; and
• Recognition that the current health MDGs will not be achieved by 2015, and affirmation of the need to include the unmet targets and indicators in the post–2015 framework, and;
• Recognition that most low-income countries are too poor to finance the most basic level of health services and provide financial risk protection, and that global solidarity and structural changes are needed to address the causes of persistent inequalities between and within countries to achieve truly universal UHC; and
• The numerous and interconnected factors that impact on improving health outcomes, including social and environmental determinants of health