Success stories of helth financing reforms for universal coverage

According to the definition used in the World Health Report 2010 (Health Systems Financing: the Path to Universal Coverage) and backed by all Member States in a World Health Assembly resolution of 2011, a country can be said to have attained Universal Coverage when the whole population has access to needed health services - prevention, promotion, rehabilitation and treatment – without the risk of financial hardship linked to paying for the use of these services. Many of the low- and middle-income countries are still far away from this goal; they
generally have high levels of direct payments that prevent access to care, while the health services are often not available in the first place for parts of the population or are of unacceptable quality.