Katherine Jennings
COVID-19 has strained health systems around the world wherein we have seen heterogeneous responses at global, national, state, and city levels. Chaos has reigned particularly strongly in countries with weakly governed health systems that contain large private sectors. Many of the challenges that countries are facing are due to a lack of strategy for private sector engagement within mixed health systems.
WHO’s new strategy seeks to redress a critical health system governance gap for the effective engagement of the private health service delivery sector in the context of Universal Health Coverage, but the concepts can and should be applied to national COVID-19 responses as well. It is critical for countries to move towards robust governance of the whole health service delivery system, not despite the current context, but because of it.
To engage in effective implementation of the strategy, we need partners at the global, country, and regional levels to adopt this new way of thinking about governance of mixed health systems. We hope to facilitate a straightforward introduction and understanding of the strategy via the following infographic. This one-pager outlines the key components of the document, including why it is important, the methods behind its development, the governance behaviors that countries should adopt, and where WHO needs to prioritize upcoming efforts.
The one-page summary of WHO’s strategy is available for download below:
To see the full Strategy Report click here