Background
Momentum around Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in East and Southern Africa (ESA) region is increasing. UHC is emerging as a dominant framework to increase access to, and quality of, essential health services. Fifteen out of 23 ESA countries have already signed the new UHC-2030 global compact. These countries are: Burundi, Comoros, DR of Congo, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. Of these, nine countries in the region have developed UHC roadmaps. These countries include: Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, South Sudan, Tanzania and Zambia.
To accelerate progress towards UHC, most of the ESA countries are: prioritizing provision of a set of essential health services aligned to their country needs; and, developing plans to progressively expand the number of services under UHC as the economy and/or financing for health increases. The UHC frameworks of most of these countries include not only ‘what services’ are covered (also referred as UHC benefit package), but also ‘how they are fairly funded’ (i.e., many Countries are trying to either refine the existing ‘Pool Health Financing mechanisms’ and ‘Financial protection/Waiver schemes’ or planning to initiate new mechanisms and schemes), and ‘how they are managed and delivered’ (i.e. services delivered through public sector or public-private mixed delivery modalities).
