Analysing health expenditures and financial protection

Many countries in the Western Pacific Region still face challenges in ensuring adequate financial protection against the cost of illness, being heavily reliant on out-of-pocket health expenditures to finance health services. Relying on out-of-pocket payments may cause households to incur catastrophic health spending, which in turn can push them into poverty. As countries undergo health reforms and advance universal health coverage (UHC), it is critical to monitor access to care, financial protection, and how funding flows within the health system. Financial protection is achieved when direct payments made to obtain health services do not expose people to financial hardship and do not threaten living standards. Ensuring prepayment and pooling of resources for health is key to ensuring financial protection.

WHO supports countries to monitor UHC through analysis of household survey data on health service utilization and financial protection, and on the collection, production and use of health expenditure data, including annual updating of the WHO Global Health Expenditure Database (GHED). Countries in the Region are continually improving processes to track and monitor health expenditures, which is essential for monitoring UHC and informing evidence-based policy making. It can provide insights to government priority spending on health, the reliance of countries on external funding, and growth of health spending. Several countries in the Region are conducting country-led annual national health account work detailing the flow of expenditures within the health system.