The Fifth Global Ministerial Summit on Patient Safety was held in Montreux, Switzerland on February 23-24 under the theme “Less Harm, Better Care: From Resolution to Implementation.”
He Fifth World Ministerial Summit on Patient Safety closed in Montreux, Switzerland, on February 24, after endorsing the Montreux Charter on Patient Safety with recommended actions to address preventable harm in healthcare. This was the first Global Ministerial Summit on Patient Safety to take place after the COVID-19 pandemic, which has exposed the high risk of unsafe care for patients, health workers and the general public, and made visible a series of security breaches in all the basic components of health systems. The summit was organized by the Swiss government.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, participated in the Summit with the host, Swiss President Alain Berset. In his address to the ministerial segment, Dr. Tedros urged health ministers to invest in patient safety as part of their commitment to universal health coverage and health security; build a safety culture and strengthen information and learning systems; support health workers and build their capacity; strengthen data systems; and to involve patients and their families in their own care. Dr. Tedros announced that the theme for World Patient Safety Day 2023 will be “Engaging Patients for Patient Safety.”
In Montreux, delegations from more than 80 countries discussed the key gaps and challenges for the implementation of the World Health Assembly resolution (WHA72.6) “Global Action on Patient Safety” and the global roadmap for patient safety, the Global Action Plan for Patient Safety 2021-2030: Towards Eliminating Avoidable Harms in Health Care.
Despite progress in addressing patient safety challenges around the world, concerted efforts are needed to ensure the safety of patients and healthcare workers, the delegations noted, emphasizing that lessons learned from the crisis of COVID-19 have enormous potential to build safer and more resilient health systems.
The Montreux Charter on Patient Safety, endorsed at the Summit, reaffirms that patient harm in healthcare is an urgent public health issue, relevant to countries of all income ranges and geographies, and therefore a shared global challenge. Identifies actions for countries to reduce implementation gaps in patient safety, including by treating patient safety as a global public health priority, building on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, deepening partnerships, collaboration, and mutual learning, and involving patients and their families. . The Charter also called for prioritizing patient safety, including drug safety, safe surgery, infection prevention and control, and antimicrobial resistance.
Unsafe care is among the leading causes of death and disability in the world. It is particularly acute in settings with limited resources. In the years before the COVID-19 pandemic, 2.6 million people died each year due to security breaches in hospitals in low-income countries. Rich countries are not immune: Nearly 15 percent of hospital spending and activity in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries could be attributed to dealing with security lapses.
It is estimated that more than half of all cases of patient harm can be prevented by working together to create a safer healthcare system for all and building a culture of safety that emphasizes continuous improvement, learning and innovation.
The Montreux Summit builds on previous Global Ministerial Summits on Patient Safety, which raised awareness of the burden of preventable patient harm in health care and fostered strategic approaches to strengthen Patient Safety, since London (2016 ), to Bonn (2017) and Tokyo. (2018) and Jeddah (2019).
The Sixth Summit will be held in Chile in 2024.