Financing options for the provision of assistive products

Having predictable, stable and adequate financial resources is essential for achieving universal coverage of essential health products and services, including assistive products. Access to such resources would enable governments and participating organizations to initiate and maintain a system for providing assistive products and associated services, as well as to grow the scope and scale of their operations over time. While limited funding is not the only reason to explain the shortfall in the provision of assistive products globally, unpredictable and inadequate public funding has been cited as the primary cause of poor access to these products in many countries. Several financing options have been presented in this paper that could be considered by decision-makers to initiate or supplement the financing of assistive products.