The International Labour Organization (ILO) has called for an end to the “silos” between social protection and healthcare, urging world leaders to treat health as a fundamental human right rather than a luxury. Marking the 2025 International Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Day, the agency warned that achieving “Health for All” is impossible without strong social health protection (SHP) systems that shield workers from financial ruin.
In a year defined by aggressive global advocacy, the ILO took center stage at the Second World Summit for Social Development in Doha, Qatar. In a high-level side event co-hosted with the World Health Organization (WHO), the agency presented a strong case for how universal social protection acts as a “safety net” that improves national health outcomes, reduces poverty, and builds economic resilience.
For Nigeria, the 2025 initiatives translated into direct technical support. The ILO Country Director for Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, Vanessa Phala, has consistently emphasized that a “rights-based approach” is the only way to ensure the informal sector—which makes up the bulk of Nigeria’s economy—is not left behind.
The ILO’s 2025 intervention in Nigeria focused on:
- Coverage Extension: Training national and regional officials on innovative ways to bring more workers into the national health insurance fold.
- Scheme Administration: Improving the management of existing health schemes to ensure funds are used efficiently.
- Digital Transformation: Facilitating South–South knowledge exchanges, including study tours to Nepal, where African officials observed the openIMIS system—an open-source platform for managing health protection data.
To mark World Health Day in April 2025, the ILO launched the Social Health Protection Toolkit. This digital hub provides policymakers with practical tools to design schemes that reach vulnerable groups.
The agency also released a groundbreaking working paper, Universal Health Insurance Schemes, which compared 10 low- and middle-income countries. The study highlighted how nations can successfully integrate the poor and informal workers—like petty traders and artisans—into sustainable health insurance models.
In East Africa, the ILO assessed the financial sustainability of community-based health insurance in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, focusing on including refugees. In Zambia and Burkina Faso, the organization used sophisticated actuarial models to help governments predict how policy changes would affect their citizens’ health coverage.
The ILO’s 2025 roadmap makes it clear: providing a doctor is only half the battle. The other half is ensuring that when a worker walks into a clinic, they don’t have to choose between buying medicine and feeding their family.
