Over the past few years, self-care has advanced as a concept, practice, policy, and particularly during the time of COVID-19, a necessity to meeting the health needs of people across the globe. At a time when health systems are increasingly overstretched trying to meet the demands of COVID-19 and millions of individuals unable to access care, safe and effective self-care practices have the potential to improve the equity and efficiencies of health systems and offer a path for health systems to achieve universal health coverage.
Self-care can fast-track progress toward universal health coverage by broadening access to entry points into the health system, and countries have a critical opportunity to chart a new frontier for self-care interventions. While self-care is neither a replacement for quality primary care, nor a short cut to universal health coverage, self-care can act as an integral and complementary component of overall healthcare systems.