With LHSS support, the Ministry of Health in Ukraine is connecting health facilities with telemedicine equipment, training physicians and patients, and forging other parts of an impactful telemedicine system: policies, transparent financing arrangements for services, and agreed-upon roles among stakeholders.

Having proven invaluable in helping Ukrainians access health care throughout the Russian invasion, telemedicine is poised to play an integral role in health care delivery in Ukraine after the war ends. 

The COVID-19 pandemic placed extraordinary stress on the Kyrgyz Republic’s health system and health care providers, revealing the need for new approaches that would address the immediate needs brought on by the pandemic and contribute to the country’s health system resilience.

New capacities in delivering remote care are saving lives and strengthening Ukraine's health system resilience. 

To advance progress toward universal health coverage, agreed-upon health priorities need to be reflected in national plans and budgets. This blog offers key lessons for ministries of health seeking to make that happen.

Routine stakeholder engagement is critical to fair and inclusive national priority setting for health, but many countries face challenges in ​​reaching key groups. This blog shares promising practices for bringing in key stakeholders and making sure the loudest voices aren’t the only ones heard.

​​​For countries wanting to strengthen health budget execution, learning about promising approaches used by others is one thing but putting them into practice is another. This blog reveals how two countries, Lao PDR and Peru, adapted promising practices and began to implement them.

Ministries of health know that priority setting is important, but explicit priority-setting processes — processes that are inclusive, transparent, and informed by evidence — often are not institutionalized. This blog shares the promising practices being used in several countries.

Ukraine prioritizes telemedicine as part of its comprehensive health reform to increase transparency of health service provision, expand access to quality health services, and enhance efficiency in the health sector.

How can countries make progress towards good health budget execution? In this latest blog in our budget execution series, ministry of health practitioners from eight countries offer lessons based on their own experiences and shared learning. 

Through an LHSS-Joint Learning Network learning exchange, health practitioners from seven countries are sharing successful experiences and promising practices to institutionalize explicit national priority-setting processes for health. The goal? To help countries set equitable national health priorities and ensure that these priorities are reflected in national health plans and budgets.

Both Ghana and Bangladesh have implemented health budget accountability mechanisms. Their experiences offer practical lessons that other countries can adapt to their own budget execution needs. 

Health workers play a central role not only in providing continued care for COVID-19 patients, but also in promoting vaccination and combating misinformation, with evidence-based health education. 

What do Lao PDR, Malaysia, and Kenya have in common? All three countries have strengthened their budget structures and processes to enable good health budget execution. Their experiences hold valuable lessons for others striving to increase budget execution and unlock significant resources for health.

Late last year, health sector practitioners from eight countries met to tackle the issue head-on as participants in the Joint Learning Network Health Budget Execution Learning Exchange. They made meaningful progress.