Nurses’ Involvement Key to Ensuring Achievement of Universal Health Coverage

As part of its campaign for Universal Health Coverage (UHC), the International Council of Nurses (ICN) attended the High Level Forum on UHC held in Tokyo, Japan, 12-15 December 2017.

ICN’s Third Vice President, Dr Sung Rae Shin (pictured far right) attended important sessions at the event focusing on UHC, primary health care, health workforce motivation, and gender equality.

Dr Judith Shamian, ICN President Emeritus, was a panelist at the session on ”Strengthening Health Workforce”, speaking about the importance of actively utilizing nurses  giving them a seat at decision-making tables.

Jointly organised by the Government of Japan, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), UHC2030 and JICA, the UHC Forum aimed to galvanize the health sector, countries, development partners, civil society, and the private sector towards the common goal of UHC, including pandemic preparedness, and highlighting country success and breakthrough experiences to accelerate the progress of UHC.

The UHC Forum co-organizers issued the Tokyo Declaration on Universal Health Coverage, reiterating the importance of Target 3.8 of the SDGs, which seeks to provide all people with access to high-quality, integrated, “people-centred” health services. They expressed their concern that progress toward UHC is too slow and called for greater commitment to accelerate progress towards UHC. ICN supports this call and urges the organizers and governments to ensure that nurses are central to the effort.

“As the global voice of nursing, ICN’s participation in these high level events is critical,” said Annette Kennedy, ICN President. “The world will not be able to achieve universal health coverage without the active involvement of the largest groups of health professionals: nurses. At this UHC Forum, there was a clear call to “leave no one behind” but the absence of nurses as speakers was sadly too evident. Nurses must be a voice to lead!”

A meeting of the WHO Global Service Delivery Network, of which ICN is a member and supporter, was held prior to the event. ICN is working through this network, which was launched earlier this year, to support and promote nursing in primary and community settings as nurse-led models of care are a crucial element to achieving UHC. The WHO Global Service Delivery Network aims to strengthen knowledge exchange, collaboration and advocacy on integrated people-centred health service delivery for universal health coverage.

The agenda of the UHC Forum included a mix of plenary and parallel sessions with more than 300 high-level policy makers (heads of State, Ministers of Health and Finance) and experts including representatives from Ministries of Finance and Health from low and middleincome countries, experts from bi- and multi-lateral institutions, civil society organisations, private sector institutions, and academic institutions.

ICN is a strong advocate and believer in health care for all as a solution to combat inequalities, deliver the right care to the right people at the right moment no matter the location and no matter the means. In this effort, ICN has chosen UHC and Health is a Human Right as the themes for the 2018 International Nurses Day with the hashtags #VoiceToLead and #IND2018, uniting the nursing profession as the lynchpin of political action. Nurses are ideally placed to speak out for UHC and the right to health.