SDG Indicator No. 3.8.1: the indicator is an index reported on a unit-less scale of 0 to 100, which is computed as the geometric mean of 14 tracer indicators of health service coverage. The 14 tracer indicators were selected because they are well-established, with available data widely reported by countries (or expected to become widely available soon). Therefore, the index can be computed with existing data sources and does not require initiating new data collection efforts solely to inform the index.
Indicator 3.8.1 is for health service coverage and together with indicator 3.8.2 (on health expenditures in relation to a household’s budget to identify financial hardship caused by direct health care payments) is meant to capture the service coverage and financial protection dimensions, respectively, of target 3.8. Therefore these two indicators should be always monitored jointly. NB: this SDG indicator does not foresee disaggregation.

A baseline value for the UHC service coverage index for 2015 across 183 countries will be published in late 2017. As part of this process, data sources going back to 2000 were assembled, and future work will involve time trends in the index. See the https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/ for more detailed information.