Why accountability matters for universal health coverage and meeting the SDGs

Given that efforts to advance universal health coverage (UHC) and other global health agendas, such as non-communicable disease, are now considering separate accountability mechanisms, lessons gleaned from 3 years of work by the UN Secretary-General's Independent Accountability Panel (IAP) are relevant to understanding what accountability means and why it matters for the Global Strategy, and for UHC. In 2010, then-UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon set out a Global Strategy on Women's and Children's Health.1 That, in turn, led to the WHO–ITU Commission on Information and Accountability2 that recommended creation of the independent Expert Review Group (iERG) to ensure that commitments to women's and children's health were being honoured. Monitoring is crucial for accountability (figure). [...]accountability requires reliably collected data, disaggregated to detect disparities, to indicate who is being left behind.