Sehat Sahulat Program (SSP) – Pakistan’s largest social health protection programme – an effort towards achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC)

Universal health coverage in today’s world has become an essential target to be achieved. However, a challenge that confronts many low- and middle-income countries is ensuring access to basic health services for an entire population without any financial hardship or barriers. To achieve and sustain universal health coverage, governments should generate enough resources to provide safety nets to the masses. Social health protection (SHP) is an important tool that helps in reducing poverty and inequality. The key objective lying behind the SHP concept is to achieve universal health coverage that leads to effective access to essential health care for all in need. The effective access to the health benefits is only possible when certain conditions are met including, i) a rights-based approach ii) affordability of necessary health care (without financial hardship or increased risk of poverty) iii) availability of necessary health services of adequate quality iv) and last but not least financial protection. Pakistan in a very short period has successfully launched and is running country’s largest social health protection programme (Sehat Sahulat Program – SSP) covering over 8.0 million poor families to date. The programme is being implemented nationwide in a phased-wise manner and there is a serious effort of the government to achieve UHC in Pakistan.