Mutuals have an important role to play in achieving universal health coverage. Eric Chenut, President of Mutualité Française, spoke on 9 May in New York at the UN multi-stakeholder hearing on universal health coverage to represent the position of the International Association of Mutuality (AIM) at this meeting, which is an integral part of the preparations for the UN high-level summit on universal health coverage, to be held on 21 September.
In his speech, Eric Chenut said that AIM federates several hundred mutual, covering 240 million people in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
Mutuals are community-based associations by and for people, which are an integral part of the social movement. They promote effective access to full health by financing individual health care in a collective, non-profit and democratic way, and by carrying out preventive and health promotion activities for the people in their territories.
Chenut called on States to recognise that “only solidarity and non-profit orientation are capable of giving access to health protection to the greatest number of people, and that mutual societies fully meet these criteria”.
Considering also the adoption of the recent United Nations Resolution for the promotion of the social and solidarity economy for sustainable development, Chenut called for recognition of the mutual movement and its role in achieving Universal Health Coverage.
Partner of UHC2030
AIM has also recently become a partner of UHC2030, a multi-stakeholder platform set up by the World Health Organization, the OECD and the World Bank to promote collaboration on health systems strengthening and nurture stakeholder contributions in the run-up to the UN High Level Meeting in September.
AIM supports the UHC2030 goals of leaving no one behind by ensuring innovative, safe, affordable, accessible, accessible and sustainable healthcare, while calling for its own goals of access to high quality, equitable and non-discriminatory healthcare to be realised.
