This year’s World Health Day (7 April) was on Universal Health Coverage – a key target of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. With the European Elections around the corner, European Patients’ Forum expresses their strong support and their views on this.
Affordable and timely access to high quality healthcare is a fundamental human right. While Universal Health Coverage is a well-recognised goal for all healthcare systems in the EU, this basic right is not yet a reality for all patients in the EU. On the contrary, evidence shows disparities in access to healthcare in Europe are increasing, with many patients falling through the cracks and being left behind with no or insufficient health coverage.
Equitable person-centred high-quality health and social care should be made accessible in a timely way, to every patient who needs it, regardless of gender, age, disability, employment, residence status or geographical location.
This message is all the more important in the current challenging political environment, in which European citizens will vote to elect a new European Parliament, with the possibility of less meaningful EU action on health post-2020.
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