December 12 of every year has been designated by the United Nations as International Universal Health Coverage Day, in recognition of the need to accelerate progress towards universal health coverage. Such efforts towards progressively realizing the right to health involve ensuring access to essential health services for each country’s population as well as providing financial risk protection to minimize out-of-pocket expenditure and even impoverishment due to expensive healthcare costs.

To improve local compliance with universal health coverage, greater social participation or engagement has been recommended by the World Health Organization, in order to reach the least reached communities and ensure that no one is left behind. However, with rising costs of and beyond healthcare, there is an urgent and imperative need for UHC to be fully realized and comprehensively implemented. Hence, this year’s UHC Day has the following theme: “Unaffordable health costs? We’re sick of it!”

IDEALS is in a unique position to call for both accountability and social participation given its work in (1) civil registration-related efforts for individuals from indigenous communities and decommissioned combatants to be registered under PhilHealth or other government services, and (2) engagement with community-based and civil society organizations to be involved in and contracted by their local health systems for TB and HIV care. This UHC Day, our organization can contribute towards the urgent call for UHC implementation through sharing our experiences and challenges on the ground, and the need for further support and collaborative efforts towards the realization of the right to health.