{{The World Bank has raised alarm over the threat to human existence of poverty and ill health, even as it gave recipes on how to end poverty by 2030.}}
Group President of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, in his speech at the ongoing 66th World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva, Switzerland on ‘Poverty, Health and the Human Future’ said to end poverty and boost shared prosperity, countries need robust, inclusive economic growth.
And to drive growth, they need to build human capital through investments in health, education and social protection for all their citizens.
The World Bank President said by current best estimates, worldwide, out-of-pocket health spending forces 100 million people into extreme poverty every year, and inflicts severe financial hardship on another 150 million.
To free the world from absolute poverty by 2030, countries must ensure that all of their citizens have access to quality and affordable health services; and that countries can end the injustice of out-of-pocket health spending forces by introducing equitable models of health financing along with social protection measures such as cash transfers for vulnerable households.
Last month, the World Bank Group, committed to work with countries to end absolute poverty worldwide by 2030. For the first time, the organisation set an expiration date for extreme poverty.
Kim said the World Bank Group has adopted five specific ways to support countries in their drive towards universal health coverage.
These include: continue to ramp up our analytic work and support for health systems; support countries in an all-out effort to reach Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5, on maternal mortality and child mortality; with WHO and other partners, the World Bank Group will strengthen their measurement work in areas relevant to universal health coverage; will deepen work on the science of delivery; and will continue to step up work on improving health through action in other sectors, because policies in areas such as agriculture, clean energy, education, sanitation, and women’s empowerment all greatly affect whether people lead healthy lives.
Kim explained: “This means that, today as never before, we have the opportunity to unite global health and the fight against poverty through action that is focused on clear goals.
“Countries will take different paths towards universal health coverage. There is no single formula. However, today, an emerging field of global health delivery science is generating evidence and tools that offer promising options for countries.”
He said every country in the world can improve the performance of its health system in the three dimensions of universal coverage: access, quality, and affordability.
“Priorities, strategies and implementation plans will differ greatly from one country to another. In all cases, countries need to tie their plans to tough, relevant metrics. And international partners must be ready to support you.
All of us together must prevent ‘universal coverage’ from ending up as a toothless slogan that doesn’t challenge us, force us to change, force us to get better every day,” Kim said.
The World Bank President said today the world has resources, tools and data that our predecessors could only dream of and his heightens countries’ responsibility and strips them of excuses.
“Today we can and must connect the values expressed at Alma-Ata to strategy and systems analysis; to what I have been calling a ‘science of delivery’; and to rigorous measurement. And we must actually build healthier societies.”
He said the setting for this work is the growing movement for universal health coverage and that the aims of universal coverage are to ensure that all people can access quality health services, to safeguard all people from public health risks, and to protect all people from impoverishment due to illness: whether from out-of-pocket payments for health care or loss of income when a household member falls sick.
{wirestory}
Leave a Reply