WHA74 STATEMENT
Global action on patient safety
Agenda Item 13. 1
The International Alliance of Patients’ Organizations, the International Pharmaceutical Federation, the International Hospital Federation, the World Medical Association, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations and all the other member organizations of the Fight the Fakes Alliance, welcome and endorse the decision made by the 148th Session of the Executive Board on 21 January 2021 to recommend that the 74thWorld Health Assembly consider and adopt the WHO Flagship Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021-2030.
To build back better and ensure we have people-centred accessible, acceptable, affordable, and quality healthcare systems and universal health coverage, we first must ensure patient safety across the whole healthcare spectrum from health promotion to prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and palliative care across the life course.
We concur with the Executive Board and the Director-General and urge the Member States to incorporate the Six Guiding Principles and engage the patients, their families, and carers in cocreating safe care. It is particularly important that we instil a patient safety culture in the design and delivery of universal health coverage 2030. Safe care fosters trust in health systems, health professionals and medical products, trust that can be undermined by products and interventions that do not adhere to the highest standards of quality, such as substandard and falsified medicines.
After having witnessed fragmented responses to patient and health professional safety during the COVID-19 Pandemic, it is now important that the WHO Flagship Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021-2030 be implement in close collaboration with all stakeholders. Global patient safety action in UHC 2030 must be a whole of government, whole of society, whole of industry and the whole of the patient community collaboration. We must not leave any one out or behind.
The global action on patient safety must be evidence based, putting research into patient safety practice, and patient safety practice and learnings back into research. Use of scientific expertise and patient experience must drive patient safety policies and actions that are appropriate for each care setting.
We urge the WHA adopt this Resolution.
