A Global Agenda for 2025–2028: Promoting, Delivering, and Protecting Health «Part Seven»

Health Service Coverage and Financial Protection

This strategic objective aims to address stark inequalities in health services worldwide, with an estimated 4.5 billion people lacking access to essential health services and 2 billion people facing financial hardship due to out-of-pocket health expenditures.

This objective accelerates progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 3 (ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages) and responds to major demographic, climatic, and epidemiological trends that national health systems must manage.

The objective seeks to close gaps in service, population, and financial coverage to achieve universal health coverage, including by strengthening public sector capacity to deliver essential services while accelerating the integration of innovative, evidence-based clinical interventions into public health policies.

The integrated, people-centered, rights-based approach prioritizes reaching those who lack access in order to reduce inequalities, improve patient safety and quality of care across the life course, and eliminate out-of-pocket payments for vulnerable and marginalized populations.

The objective emphasizes the critical importance of improving service quality, which is increasingly a greater barrier to reducing mortality than insufficient access.

It also advances the antimicrobial resistance agenda and facilitates progress toward major disease control, elimination, and eradication targets (including polio, measles, cervical cancer, and Guinea worm disease) by supporting sustainable responses and addressing coverage gaps through new and promising interventions.

Joint Outcome 4.1: Improved equity in access to quality services for noncommunicable diseases, mental health conditions, and communicable diseases, while controlling antimicrobial resistance

Early detection and appropriate management of cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases, diabetes, chronic pain, cognitive disorders, eye, hearing, and oral health conditions, rare diseases, and other noncommunicable diseases will be expanded.

The primary health care approach will be applied to emphasize integration in the context of rising multimorbidity, promote WHO “best buys,” prioritize underserved populations, address multi-country priorities, bring affordable quality services closer to communities, and provide counseling to reduce risk factors.

Coverage gaps will be reduced and sustainable responses in prevention, early detection, and appropriate management of priority communicable diseases—such as tuberculosis, HIV, malaria, measles, diarrheal and vector-borne diseases, pneumonia, and neglected tropical diseases—will be supported.

A person-centered approach will be promoted through a core package of interventions to prevent infections and ensure universal access to quality diagnosis and appropriate treatment, including the promotion and responsible use of quality-assured essential antibiotics.

Full implementation of national action plans to combat antimicrobial resistance will be prioritized.

Joint Outcome 4.2: Improved equity in access to sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, adolescent, and older persons’ health and nutrition services, and immunization coverage

A life-course approach will be adopted to address gaps in access to essential services, including core nutrition services, for maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health, as well as for adults and older persons.

This includes ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health services, including family planning, information, and education, and integrating reproductive health into national strategies and programs in line with SDG targets 3.7 and 5.6 and relevant international agreements.

The approach also addresses gender-based violence and harmful practices such as female genital mutilation.

Special emphasis will be placed on scaling up proven interventions to reduce maternal and newborn mortality during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postnatal period, and on strengthening newborn health services, including essential newborn care and care for small and sick newborns.