Primary care reforms in Central Asia – On the path to universal health coverage?

This article reviews progress in primary care reforms in the four Central Asian countries Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It draws on the country monitoring work of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, a review of the peer-reviewed literature and an analysis of data available in international databases. The retrieved information was organized according to key health system functions (governance, provision, financing and resource generation), as well as key aims of universal health coverage (access to and quality of primary care and financial protection). The article finds that the four countries have made substantial reforms in all of these areas, but that there is still some way to go towards universal health coverage. Key challenges are the overall lack of public funding for primary care, poor financial protection due to prescribed outpatient medications being generally outside of publicly funded benefits packages, the low status and salary of primary care workers, problems of access to primary care in rural areas, and underdeveloped quality monitoring and improvement systems.