EHS-COVID (549) Financial access to health services

7 September, 2022

CITATION: Foregone healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic: early survey estimates from 39 low- and middle-income countries

Jakub Jan Kakietek, Julia Dayton Eberwein, Nicholas Stacey, David Newhouse, Nobuo Yoshida

Health Policy and Planning, Volume 37, Issue 6, June 2022, Pages 771–778, https://doi.org/10.1093/heapol/czac024

Published: 11 March 2022 Article history

KEY MESSAGES

A significant proportion of households in LMICs had to forego needed healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While in richer countries this was largely reported as due to fear of contracting COVID-19 or lockdowns, in poorer countries foregone care was reported as due to financial constraints.

COMMENT (NPW): The full text concludes: 'Therefore, to protect progress towards universal health coverage achieved to date in LMICs, in addition to COVID-19 vaccination, policy actions at the national and global level that ensure financial access to essential health services need to be a critical part of the recovery.'

Best wishes, Neil

Coordinator, WHO-HIFA project on Essential Health Services and COVID-19

https://www.hifa.org/projects/essential-health-services-and-covid-19