Our partner the International Alliance of Patients’ Organizations (IAPO) is celebrating their annual Patient Solidarity Day (PSD) on December 6!
Under this year’s theme ‘Accelerating progress for safe patient-centred universal health coverage’, we want to raise our voice together with IAPO and speak out against the dangers of substandard and falsified medicines for patients, communities and countries as a whole. To see safe and patient centred health systems which leave no one behind, patients need to be meaningfully involved in discussions and decision-making processes on the importance of putting patient safety in the centre of universal health coverage (UHC).
There currently is a great momentum to call for patient-centred healthcare. In May of this year, the World Health Assembly (WHA) adopted a resolution for ‘Global action for patient safety‘ and in September all 193 member states of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) signed the Political Declaration on UHC which emphasises the need to ‘scale up efforts to build and strengthen quality and people-centred health systems and enhance their performance by improving patient safety, built on a foundation of strong primary health care and coherent national policies and strategies for quality and safe health services’.
In order to achieve UHC and guarantee patient safety, it is also crucial to curb the production and distribution of poor-quality and falsified medicines. If patients unknowingly consume fake medical products, there is great risk that they might get even sicker, or worse, they could die. Falsified medicines also contribute to the growing global threat of antimicrobial resistance, they undermine efforts to build up strong and high-quality health care systems, and hinder countries’ socio-economic development.
IAPO and Fight the Fakes are therefore calling on governments to:
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create strong legislative frameworks and law enforcement which prohibit the manufacturing and sale of falsified medical products
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implement robust and effective drug regulatory systems which prevent falsified medicines from reaching patients
Join our fight against fake medicines and speak up for patient safety & patient-centred UHC by sharing our social media cards: