A recent drive led by the World Health Organization to prioritize universal health coverage within the post-2015 development agenda is gathering support — but one of the world’s largest and most influential donors is yet to be convinced.
Implementing UHC that everyone can afford implies building or strengthening systems, training health workers and ensuring access to medicines — not to mention financing all of those things. Indeed, it is a much broader and more complex task than achieving specific targets, such as reversing the spread of HIV under the current Millennium Development Goals.
This is one of the reasons the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — which has spent some $8 billion on global health programs to date — has still not clarified its position on UHC.