Health System Reforms for Universal Health Coverage: Insights from Select Emerging Market Countries

Abstract

This policy brief synthesises insights, relating to key challenges faced in achieving UHC, from six emerging country case studies—Brazil, China, Indonesia, Mexico, Thailand, and Turkey—with varying contexts in their journey towards UHC. These countries were selected for their comparability to India in terms of economic level, State structure, the share of informal employment, type of health system, and burden of disease. Individual country papers reviewed and analysed the developments and reforms in health systems over the past decades in the respective country contexts (Venkateswaran & Singh, 2022a and 2022b; Nundy & Venkateswaran, 2022; Nundy & Bhatt, 2022a and 2022b; Singh & Venkateswaran, 2022;). This brief draws out some important insights for India and similar countries aiming to move towards UHC, keeping in mind the challenges faced by these countries.