If 2022 was the year that the world hoped to “build back better” from COVID-19, 2023 will be the year that reality sets in for health systems around the world. The post-COVID-19 global economic stagnation, combined with inflation and rises in debt interest rates, is coming together to severely restrict fiscal space for health in most countries.
Ghana, for example, just defaulted on its debt in late December. Thirty-eight countries are actually projected to have lower government revenues in 2027 compared to pre-pandemic levels. And yet the deadline to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals looms ever closer, populations continue to age, and the burden of noncommunicable diseases is rising.
Ministers of health around the world face more and more competing priorities, but with inadequate resources to address them. Difficult choices must be made or progress toward universal health coverage, or UHC, will stall. We encourage policymakers and development partners to make greater use of a key policy route out of this dilemma: Establishing explicit health benefits packages, or HBPs, that re-focus limited resources on the highest priority services for all.
About the authors
Peter Baker
Peter Baker is a policy fellow and assistant director of the global health policy program at the Center for Global Development.
Y-Ling Chi
Y-Ling Chi is a senior policy analyst at the Center for Global Development.
Rob Baltussen
Rob Baltussen is a global health economics professor at the Radboud University Medical Center.
