WHO marks Universal Health Coverage Day with new data portal

To mark the Universal Health Coverage Day, WHO today launched a new data portal to track progress towards universal health coverage (UHC) across the globe.
The portal shows where countries need to improve access to services and where they need to improve information.
The portal features the latest data on access to health services globally and in each of WHO's 194 Member States, including India, along with information about equity of access.
Next year, WHO will add data on the impact that paying for health services has on household finances.
"Any country seeking to achieve UHC must be able to measure it. Data on its own won't prevent disease or save lives, but it shows where governments need to act to strengthen their health systems and protect people from the potentially devastating effects of health care costs," said Margaret Chan, Director-General WHO.

UHC means that all people and communities can access the health services they need without facing financial hardship.

According to the portal, under the section density of hospital beds (per 10,000 population) 2004-2014, India has only seven.
Proportion of married or in-union women of reproductive age who have their need for family planning satisfied with modern methods was 63.9 per cent for India for the period 2005-2015.
Similarly, for anti-natal care coverage for India was at over 49 per cent for 2000-2015.
DTP3 (three doses of diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis) vaccines immunisation coverage among one year olds between 1980-2015 for India was 87 per cent.

Similarly, TB treatment success rate for India was 74 per cent according to the portal while average anti-retroviral therapy (ART) coverage among people living with HIV in 2015 for India was 43 per cent.
Age-standardized prevalence of tobacco smoking among persons 15 years and older was 11.4 per cent in 2015.
Proporation of population using improved sanitation facilities in India was 39.6 per cent.
The portal also showed that less than half of children with suspected pneumonia in low income countries are taken to an appropriate health provider while of the estimated 10.4 million new cases of tuberculosis in 2015, 6.1 million were detected and officially notified in 2015, leaving a gap of 4.3 million.

High blood pressure affects 1.13 billion people and over half of the world's adults with high blood pressure in 2015 lived in Asia while around 24 per cent of men and 21 per cent of women had uncontrolled blood pressure in 2015.