Health campaigners from around the world have written a letter to the World Bank’s president, Jim Yong Kim, urging him to support developing countries that want to introduce universal healthcare coverage.

Some 110 organisations signed an open letter saying that now is the moment for the bank “to play a truly progressive and transformative role in health, by supporting countries to achieve universal health coverage.”

The letter, whose signatories included Oxfam and Save the Children, urged national governments to remove all financial barriers to health services, especially user fees. It also called for “robust …