International Universal Health Coverage Day 2023; December 12th.

FORUM: "Health for All, Time for Action." International Universal Health Coverage Day 2023. This year, UHC Day presents an opportunity to revitalize commitments towards accelerating UHC as countries recover from the devastating economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Countries in all Regions needs to make significant progress on the UHC service coverage index, which measures population coverage of essential health services based on tracer interventions that include reproductive, maternal, child health, infectious diseases, non-communicable diseases and service capacity and access. Follow the conversations with the hashtags: #Timeforaction, #Healthexpenditure, #InvestinHealth, #healthForAll, #UHC, #12December, #UHCday, #UniversalHealthCoverage.

EVENTS: On Decembe 12th, the World Health Assembly (WHA), the Regional offices of the World Health Organization and the Global Health Council with host an event to mark the International Universal Health Coverage Day 2023. The theme for this year’s UHC Day is “Health for All: Time for Action”, and invites us to emphasize the need for immediate and tangible steps in creating the world we want. It calls for reflecting on a decade of progress, challenges, and opportunities in advancing UHC. The campaign urges our leaders to enact policies that guarantee equitable access to essential health services without financial hardship and will build on the momentum and outcome from the second United Nations High-Level Meeting on UHC in September 2023: a renewed action-oriented political commitment that will refocus political attention and financial investments on accelerating progress.

• Pan American Health Organization will host a forum on how to Invest, Innovate and Implement PHC to Achieve Universal Health.
• South-East Asia Region will held a Webinar on UHC-Now More Than Ever.
• European Region will organize the Tallinn Charter 15th Anniversary Health Systems Conference: Trust and transformation – resilient and sustainable health systems for the future.
• Western Pacific Region will launch the Report entitled - Progress towards universal health coverage: improving financial protection.

WEBINAR: Progress towards UHC: improving financial protection in the Western Pacific Region. On Tuesday, 12 December 2023, 12:30–13:30 Manila time, WHO will host a webinar to share findings from the new report, Progress towards universal health coverage: improving financial protection in the Western Pacific Region. Speakers will include: Lluis Vinals Torres, Director, Division of Health Systems and Services for the WHO Western Pacific Region; Ding Wang, Health Economist, WHO Western Pacific Region; and experts from countries in the region. Register for the event

• On December 11th 2023, from 14:30 – 16:00 was held a conference entitled Global Spending on Health: Coping with the Pandemic.
• On December 11th, 2023,from 14:00 – 16:00 a panel discussion entitled ''Delivering quality care to everyone,everywhere, at all times.'' was held.
• On December 11th, 2023, from 14:00 – 15:30, an event entitled '' Shaping our health future: young leaders and parliamentarians unite for UHC was held.

PUBLICATIONS: The world is off track to make significant progress towards universal health coverage (UHC) (SDG target 3.8) by 2030 as improvements to health services coverage have stagnated since 2015, and the proportion of the population that faced catastrophic levels of out-of-pocket (OOP) health spending has increased. Read the followingsuggested reports:

1. Tracking Universal Health Coverage: 2023 Global monitoring report.
2. Operational framework for building climate resilient and low carbon health systems.