Planning and monitoring of UHC at the national level: Ministry of Health of Kazakhstan

The Central Asian Association of People Living with HIV, led by Nurali Amanzholov, asked the Ministry of Health of Kazakhstan how they monitor the fulfillment of commitments to universal health coverage under the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Ministry’s response and Nurali’s comment.

The Ministry of Health’s response emphasizes that each country has the ability to determine priorities and methods based on the national context. Kazakhstan follows WHO recommendations and focuses its health care system on strengthening primary health care. This approach is reflected in the Code on Public Health of Kazakhstan and related legislation. The state provides access to a package of 5,000 services as part of guaranteed medical coverage.

As part of the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, a cross-sectoral working group was established in Kazakhstan in 2017 to analyze Sustainable Development Goal indicators. In 2021, the Coordinating Council on Sustainable Development Goals in Kazakhstan approved 33 national indicators. Kazakhstan, together with other Central Asian countries and with the support of WHO, developed the Roadmap for Health and Well-being in Central Asia for 2022-2025. This document contains the country’s goals linked to WHO and other health-related Sustainable Development Goals. More details about this Roadmap were described in the previous issue of the newsletter.

Nurali Amanzholov, Central Asian Association of People Living with HIV:

“This response gives us an understanding of government processes and the contact of the responsible person for UHC in the Ministry of Health, whom we plan to contact for future collaboration. In addition, we plan to contact the Government’s SDG Coordination Council and its People’s Working Group to include patient organizations in their work.

Moreover, it is important for us, as patient organizations, to independently monitor the implementation of both the SDG targets and the Roadmap for Health and Wellbeing. Two indicators on UHC are included in the official tracking system for SDG targets (dedicated website of the Committee on Statistics): “Coverage of basic health services” and “Proportion of private household expenditure to total health expenditure“. But it is patient organizations and communities that can show the realities on the ground, including who is not covered, why they are not covered, and for whom private spending needs to be reduced first.”