Implementing Universal Health Coverage in India and around the world

UHC Day 2016

Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Day (12th December) highlights the growing consensus that health coverage should be for everyone. On this day in 2012, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for countries to provide affordable, quality health care to every person across the world. Since then, governments have been urged to move towards this.

Consensually recognised, UHC is included in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. UHC encourages a focus on giving access to all individuals including the poorest and those who are most vulnerable. A full range of essential health services, which includes prevention, treatment, hospital care and pain control should be available to all. Access should be on the basis of need, and not related to the ability to pay.

Marking UHC Day today, Professor Kanchan Mukherjee talks about the universal health coverage experience in India and why working together to create UHC globally is so important.

About Professor Kanchan Mukherjee

Dr Kanchan Mukherjee is a Professor and Chairperson of the Centre for Health Policy, Planning and Management (CHPPM) in the School of Health Systems Studies (SHSS) at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. Prof. Mukherjee completed his postdoctoral training in HIV/AIDS research from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) through the prestigious Fogarty Fellowship programme of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA. He also completed a Masters in International Health Policy from the London School of Economics (LSE). He is the programme convener for the new programme on MPH-Health Policy, Economics and Finance started at TISS in collaboration with LSE in 2010, which is a first of its kind programme in South Asia.

Prof. Mukherjee was a visiting faculty at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and is currently a visiting professor at the University of Liverpool in the UK.  Prof. Mukherjee’s research interests include health policy and system analysis, urban health and non-communicable diseases. Prof. Mukherjee has over 35 publications in prestigious journals.

Find out more about Universal Health Coverage Day here.

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