van den Heever BMC Public Health 2012, 12(Suppl 1):S5 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/12/S1/S5 Acknowledgements The author would like to thank the School of Medicine and Public Health Sciences at Monash University, Sunway Campus in Malaysia for funding the conference that supported this paper. The support of Old Mutual South Africa in funding the Chair of Social Security Systems Administration and Management Studies and at the Graduate School of Public and Development Management within the University of the Witwatersrand is also acknowledged. This article has been published as part of BMC Public Health Volume 12 Supplement 1, 2012: Universal Coverage: Can We Guarantee Health For All?. The full contents of the supplement are available online at http://www. biomedcentral.com/bmcpublichealth/supplements/12/S1. Authors’ contributions Only one author was responsible for full manuscript. Competing interests The author declares no competing interests. 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