Ukraine’s Acting Health Minister speaks on importance of investing in human capital at 2018 IMF and World Bank Group Annual Meeting

Dr. Ulana Suprun, acting Minister of Health of Ukraine, together with the Ukrainian delegation participates in the 2018 Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group, hosted by Indonesia from October 8 to October 14. This year, the program has a strong focus on the development and investment in the world's greatest asset – human capital.

The world of finance categorizes healthcare as “spending” be it in Ukraine or any other country, when in fact, it should be in the “investment” column.

Remember 795 million people don’t have enough food to lead a healthy active life. This is unacceptable but investments in the food industry have changed the lives of millions. And, half of the world’s population of 7.4 billion cannot obtain essential health services.

To improve the situation, we need a true paradigm shift from ‘spending’ to ‘investing’, especially in the healthcare financing.

Ukraine ranks 50th among 157 countries in the new World Bank Human Capital Index (HCI), which measures the human capital that a child born today can expect to attain by the age of 18. The HCI is made of the following indicators: the probability of child survival to age 5, a child’s education (expected years of schooling and quality of education), healthy growth among children, and adult survival rates.

The HCI therefore reflects the productivity as a future worker of a child born today, compared with what it could be if he or she had full health and complete, high-quality education, which is measured on a scale of zero to one, with one being the best score. In the 2018 HCI, Ukraine scored 0.65 points, which means that children born in Ukraine today will lose 35% of their potential. According to the World Bank data, 81% of the 15-year-olds in Ukraine will survive until age 60.

The HCI is part of the World Bank Group’s Human Capital Project, which recognizes human capital as a driver of inclusive growth and develops a special program to strengthen research and measurement on human capital, as well as to support the participating countries by accelerating progress in healthcare and education reform efforts.

Ukraine was one of the first countries that expressed interest in participating in the Project. Today, 28 countries with various income levels participate in the Project and work with the World Bank Group on enhancing human capital by boosting health and education outcomes for citizens and making progress in the human capital development.

Certainly, there is room for improvement in Ukraine, in particular, health and education reforms need to be continued to achieve better outcomes.

The World Bank Group has therefore provided a number of valuable recommendations to improve the quality of healthcare in the country:

• to ensure the most rational and effective use of the allocated funds from the state budget;
• to increase state investment in human capital, especially in the healthcare and education sectors; and to mobilize additional resources, for example, by creating a special budget fund for re-directing the funds raised from taxes on alcohol and tobacco to healthcare;
• to ensure the relevance and consistency of the investments made – to build high-level political commitments, enshrined in the governments’ strategic documents to reduce the countries’ external resource dependence;
• to focus on the healthcare and education reforms, not the numbers.

It is worth noting that some progress has already been made in the right direction in the context the ongoing transformation of the national healthcare system, and in particular, the implementation of the evidence based patient centric primary care reform, which facilitates Ukraine’s move towards universal healthcare coverage, which will be in place by 2020.

The biggest obstacle to success remains the Russian military occupation of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine and the cultural and informational deception it brings.

Dr. Ulana Suprun has therefore called on the world community to increase pressure on Russia, to continue confronting Putin’s regime and to fight for the return of the temporarily occupied and uncontrolled territories of Ukraine under Kyiv's control. This is essential for the human capital development, as well as for the implementation of systemic changes necessary to achieve sustainable growth and shared prosperity.