Preventive health care, good financing and inclusive schemes for migrants and a mobile population were highlighted as the ways to achieve universal health coverage (UHC), a seminar was told.
At the "Achieving Universal Health Coverage: From the Past to the Future" seminar organised at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday, Tim Evans, senior director of Health, Nutrition and Population, World Bank Group, said it is important to convince finance ministers to change their views that health care is a luxury, as poverty cannot be eradicated when people are sick and have to pay for treatment "as they go".
"We find looking over time that two-thirds of total wealth of the countries across the world is generated by investments in human capital: health and education," he said.
National Health Security Office secretary-general Sakchai Kanjanawatana presented Thailand's experience of the UHC which has been praised by World Health Organisation director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as a good example of its practice.
He said Thailand has provided full coverage since 2002. Nowadays the country's health expenditure is 5% of GDP. It generated 20% of return on health investment, he said.
Meanwhile, health promotion and disease prevention has been put forward as a priority, with over 15% of the UHC budget, he said.
He said work on Thailand's coverage is based on "GRASP" principles which are good governance, research and regulatory capacity, adequate and equitable health system, safe financing and political commitment and social ownership which is the "soul and spirit" of the system.
The latter highlighted public participation while civil societies' representatives also take part in the practice in Thailand, he said.
Meanwhile, Maria Nenette Motus, regional director for Asia and the Pacific at the International Orgnisation for Migration, emphasised that migrants and the mobile population must be included in UHC, and she agreed preventive measures will help reduce the costs.
"A significant number of people left behind are migrants and people on the move," she said.
"In the GMS region [Greater Mekong subregion], 40-44% of people who move across borders are largely irregular. A lot of them are undocumented."
