UHC Forward: Towards Universal Health Coverage

The Commission on Macroeconomics and Health (CMH) was established by World Health Organization Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland in January 2000 to assess the place of health in global economic development. Although health is widely understood to be both a central goal and an important outcome of development, the importance of investing in health to promote economic development and poverty reduction has been much less appreciated. We have found that extending the coverage of crucial health services, including a relatively small number of specific interventions, to the world’s poor could save millions of lives each year, reduce poverty, spur economic development, and promote global security.

This report offers a new strategy for investing in health for economic development, especially in the world’s poorest countries, based upon a new global partnership of the developing and developed countries. Such an effort would require two important initiatives: a significant scaling up of the resources currently spent in the health sector by poor countries and donors alike; and tackling the non-financial obstacles that have limited the capacity of poor countries to deliver health services.

Additional investments in health—requiring of donors roughly one-tenth of one percent of their national income—would be repaid many times over in millions of lives saved each year, enhanced economic development, and strengthened global security. Indeed, without such a concerted effort, the world’s commitments to improving the lives of the poor embodied in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) cannot be met.

Commission on Macroeconomics and Health

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Chair, Isher Judge Ahluwalia, K. Y. Amoako, Eduardo Aninat, Daniel Cohen, Zephirin Diabre, Eduardo Doryan, Richard G. A. Feachem, Robert Fogel, Dean Jamison, Takatoshi Kato. Nora Lustig, Anne Mills, Thorvald Moe, Manmohan Singh, Supachai Panitchpakdi, Laura Tyson, Harold Varmus