The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include a target on universal health coverage. The Framework is fully aligned with this global movement.

In September 2015, countries adopted the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Goal 3 relates to ensuring healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages and its target 3.8 puts forward the aim of achieving universal health coverage. Making progress on this target requires countries to move towards ensuring that all people and communities have access to health services that are high quality, safe and acceptable. For this to be attainable and sustainable, effective, cost-efficient approaches to service delivery must be maximized.

The Framework sets out a vision and five strategies to make this a reality. Universal health coverage will not be achieved without improvements in service delivery, so that all people are able to access high quality health services that meet their needs. An integrated, people-centred approach is crucial to the development of health systems that can respond to today’s health challenges. A key feature of this approach is how it seeks to align how human and financial resources are spent by seeking to provide “the right care at the right time in the right place”. Without integration at various levels of the health system, all aspects of health care performance can suffer: patients get lost, needed services fail to be delivered or are delayed, quality and user satisfaction decline and costs rise. The growing movement for universal health coverage builds on the commitment to health as a human right and the Framework supports this by setting out the strategies to the vision for a future where all people have equal access to the health services they need, when they need them.