Accelerating access to electricity in health-care facilities

Electricity is needed to power the most basic services in health-care facilities – from lighting and communications to clean water supply. Reliable power is also crucial for the medical equipment necessary to safely manage childbirth or to ensure immunization as well as for undertaking most of the routine and emergency procedures. Reliable energy provision – particularly electricity – is a major enabler of universal health coverage.

Yet, populations in low- and middle-income countries are often served by health-care facilities lacking reliable electricity or any electricity all together. Even in cases when electricity supply is available, generators are often not operational, and facilities are often underserved, with energy supply being insufficient to cover all the needs of the facility.

Support, financing and investments need to be scaled up rapidly to accelerate health-care facility electrification. A myriad of clean and cost-effective energy solutions is available and rapidly deployable to electrify health-care facilities sustainably and increase their climate resiliency. Other key actions include monitoring energy access in health-care facilities more systematically; providing the necessary resources to design and implement clean energy plans, tailored to the needs of the health sector; and developing policy and finance schemes to unlock the potential of sustainable energy solutions, and to address the health sector needs.

WHO provides technical support and capacity building to countries and regions to evaluate and scale-up health-care facility electrification. To learn more about this activity, please contact the Air Quality and Health Unit at [email protected].