Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and the Coronavirus Crisis – Challenges and Responses: maintaining essential health services while responding to COVID-19

Date
Description
The webinar on Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and the Coronavirus Crisis – Challenges and Responses: maintaining essential health services while responding to COVID-19 held on May 12th, 2020 was the 10th event in the webinar series on  Social protection responses to COVID-19. It was co-organized by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Pan American Health Organization / World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) and the International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG), in collaboration with GIZ, on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Economic Development and Cooperation (BMZ), and the Australia Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).
 
With emerging examples around the world of governments responding and continuously adapting their measures to ease the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the aim of the webinar was to contribute to the global exchange of experiences to increase the understanding of challenges and solutions, improve the effectiveness of cross-disciplinary responses, and promote country-to-country learning and cooperation amongst countries, including through South-South and triangular cooperation.
 
 

Summary: https://socialprotection.org/discover/blog/universal-health-coverage-uhc-and-coronavirus-crisis-%E2%80%93-challenges-and-responses

Objective(s) of the event

Share best practices and lessons learned in the maintenance of essential health services in the context of the COVID-19 Response.

Summary of topics

With emerging examples around the world of governments responding and continuously adapting their measures to ease the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the aim of the webinar was to contribute to the global exchange of experiences to increase the understanding of challenges and solutions, improve effectiveness of cross-disciplinary responses, and promote country-to-country learning and cooperation amongst countries, including through South-South and triangular cooperation.

Takeaway points from the interventions: (i) health systems need to be able to respond to the pandemic,  and reconfigure/reorganize so as to be able to ensure the provision of all essential health services; (ii) It's not just an issue of coverage, ensuring the inputs necessary for health systems, it's really about breaking down the access barriers to health and removing issues associated with financial, geographical, cultural barriers, so that we reach all the populations that we need to reach in terms of essential health services; (iii) primary health care is an important strategy, that should have a strong resolutive capacity at the first level of care that meets the needs of populations; (iv) health financing, in a sustained global financial recession, needs to be protected and increased, otherwise we would have not learned the lesson from this pandemic.

Speakers. Brief curriculum summary

The event was moderated by Dr. James Fitzgerald, Director of Health Systems and Services, PAHO/WHO, and featured presentations from: 

  • Dr. Choe Young June, MD, PhD, Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, University College of Medicine, Republic of Korea
  • Dr. Robin Nandy, Principal Advisor & Chief of Immunizations, UNICEF
  • Dr. Yu Wenzhou, National Immunization Center of China, Center for Disease Control, People’s Republic of China
Keywords
Universal Health Coverage, UHC, social protection, responses to COVID-19,essential health services.
Presentations and reference materials
Access to the recording