UN health agency says medical insurance schemes would reduce poverty

With medical costs pushing 100 million people into poverty across the globe each year, minimal health insurance plans should be instituted in developing countries in order to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of reducing poverty and increasing access to health care, the United Nations health agency said today.

“Social health protection is feasible even in the developing world, but it has not got the attention it deserves. Countries must begin now to craft well-organized schemes, and international donors will have to help,” said Timothy Evans, Assistant Director-General for Evidence and Information for Policy for the UN World Health Organization (WHO).

This week, experts from some 40 countries meeting in Berlin at a conference convened by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GTZ), the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the International Labour Office (ILO) and WHO will lay out strategies for affordable health care in developing countries and their partners.

WHO said that a number of low-income countries – including Ghana, Rwanda and Senegal – have already experimented with innovative ways of protecting people against the financial risks of ill health. Drawing on those experiences, the GTZ, ILO and WHO are offering direct technical assistance to countries seeking to develop social health protection plans.

“It takes years to put such a scheme into place,” said Dr. Evans, “but if we start now, by 2015 – the target for the Millennium Development Goals – we could be well on the way to protecting people worldwide through equitable health financing.”

Each year 100 million people slide into poverty as a result of medical care payments, according to WHO. Another 150 million people are forced to spend nearly half their incomes on medical expenses.

In low-income countries, it would take an average of about US$ 35 per person per year to finance a social health protection scheme able to provide basic health services, of which $15 to $25 would have to come from international donors, WHO asserts.