Access to Quality Assured Medicines for Universal Health Coverage
According to the World Health Organization
(WHO) reports, more than 50 percent of the world’s
population does not yet have full coverage of essential
health services and 12 percent of the population spends
large amounts of their household income on health.
Universal health coverage (UHC) aims to provide health
services to people who need them without the burden
of financial hardship when paying for them. The United
Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically goal 3.8 asks countries to work towards providing
“access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential
medicines and vaccines for all†. This is in support of the
UHC goals of the UN member countries to ensure access
to essential services, including safe, quality-assured essential medicines. 1 in 10 medical products circulating in
LMICs are substandard or falsified according to a WHO
estimate. WHO defines substandard medicines as “authorized medical products that fail to meet their quality
standards, specifications, or both†.
