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The Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Service Coverage Index

What you should know about this indicator

How is this data described by its producer?

Rationale

Target 3.8 is defined as “Achieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all”. The concern is with all people and communities receiving the quality health services they need (including medicines and other health products), without financial hardship. Two indicators have been chosen to monitor target 3.8 within the SDG framework. Indicator 3.8.1 is for health service coverage and indicator 3.8.2 focuses on health expenditures in relation to a household’s budget to identify financial hardship caused by direct health care payments. Taken together, indicators 3.8.1 and 3.8.2 are meant to capture the service coverage and financial protection dimensions, respectively, of target 3.8. These two indicators should be always monitored jointly.

Definition

Coverage of essential health services (defined as the average coverage of essential services based on tracer interventions that include reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health, infectious diseases, non-communicable diseases and service capacity and access, among the general and the most disadvantaged population). The indicator is an index reported on a unitless scale of 0 to 100, which is computed as the geometric mean of 14 tracer indicators of health service coverage. The tracer indicators are as follows, organized by four components of service coverage: 1. Reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health 2. Infectious diseases 3. Noncommunicable diseases 4. Service capacity and access

Method of measurement

For each country, the most recent value for each tracer indicators is taken from WHO or other international agencies

Method of estimation

The index is computed using geometric means of the tracer indicators.

The Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Service Coverage Index
Coverage of essential health services (defined as the average coverage of essential services based on tracer interventions that include reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health, infectious diseases, non-communicable diseases and service capacity and access, among the general and the most disadvantaged population). The indicator is an index reported on a unitless scale of 0 to 100, which is computed as the geometric mean of 14 tracer indicators of health service coverage. The tracer indicators are as follows, organized by four components of service coverage: 1. Reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health 2. Infectious diseases 3. Noncommunicable diseases 4. Service capacity and access
Source
World Health Organization - Global Health Observatory (2025) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
May 19, 2025
Next expected update
May 2026
Date range
2000–2021

Related research and writing

Sustainable development goal 3: Good Health and Well-Being

Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Our World in Data team

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

World Health Organization – Global Health Observatory

The GHO data repository is WHO's gateway to health-related statistics for its 194 Member States. It provides access to over 1000 indicators on priority health topics including mortality and burden of diseases, the Millennium Development Goals (child nutrition, child health, maternal and reproductive health, immunization, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, neglected diseases, water and sanitation), non communicable diseases and risk factors, epidemic-prone diseases, health systems, environmental health, violence and injuries, equity among others.

Retrieved on
May 19, 2025
Retrieved from
https://www.who.int/data/gho
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
World Health Organization. 2025. Global Health Observatory data repository. http://www.who.int/gho/en/.

The GHO data repository is WHO's gateway to health-related statistics for its 194 Member States. It provides access to over 1000 indicators on priority health topics including mortality and burden of diseases, the Millennium Development Goals (child nutrition, child health, maternal and reproductive health, immunization, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, neglected diseases, water and sanitation), non communicable diseases and risk factors, epidemic-prone diseases, health systems, environmental health, violence and injuries, equity among others.

Retrieved on
May 19, 2025
Retrieved from
https://www.who.int/data/gho
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
World Health Organization. 2025. Global Health Observatory data repository. http://www.who.int/gho/en/.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: The Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Service Coverage Index”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from World Health Organization. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/universal-health-coverage-index.html [online resource] (archived on March 4, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

World Health Organization - Global Health Observatory (2025) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

World Health Organization - Global Health Observatory (2025) – processed by Our World in Data. “The Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Service Coverage Index” [dataset]. World Health Organization, “Global Health Observatory” [original data]. Retrieved April 1, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/universal-health-coverage-index.html (archived on March 4, 2026).

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Data API

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Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/universal-health-coverage-index.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/universal-health-coverage-index.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/universal-health-coverage-index.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/universal-health-coverage-index.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/universal-health-coverage-index.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/universal-health-coverage-index.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/universal-health-coverage-index.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/universal-health-coverage-index.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear