PD 10 - The Road to 2023: Are we Achieving Universal Health Coverage?

In the context of an increasingly globalized and interconnected world facing major challenges spawning global health risks and threats, broad-based collaborations and partnerships are inevitable to enable Universal Health Coverage (UHC). As partnerships can play a catalytic role in driving effective collaboration across key actors in diverse fields regarding the global health system, prioritizing them is of paramount importance for the development of global health. The critical meaning of partnerships is also reflected in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 17 that calls for “partnerships to fulfil the goals”.

In global health, numerous collaborations between product development partnerships and the pharmaceutical industry to multilateral partnerships have already demonstrated the important role in driving access to healthcare in numerous low- to middle-income countries as well as across the most effected vulnerable populations. While it is clear that partnerships can result in great benefits, challenging questions remain open. How can partnerships become more efficient, profound and agile in order to achieve a greater overall impact at the regional, national and global scale? What challenges and barriers do potential and ongoing partnerships face and how should they be addressed? How could rules that govern and improve collaboration between the private and public sectors look like?

A roadmap to foster robust and sustainable collaborations must be urgently developed to close the access gap and put us on the path to a world where equal access to quality health care is ensured for everybody.