Promoting cleaner, safer health facilities in SEAR: Informal experts consultation on improving quality and safety
Summary report 27–28 March 2019, New Delhi, India
20 September 2019
| Publication
Overview
Poor quality care remains common, especially in developing countries—and extracts a heavy toll. Progress towards universal health coverage (UHC) will be seriously constrained without improvement in the quality of both frontline services and inpatient care. Adequate quality and safety, especially in frontline services, can improve the public’s trust in and increase the use of needed health services, reducing the pressure on secondary and tertiary care. The rise of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) lends fresh urgency to this issue. Political commitment to improving quality and safety of care as part of UHC is increasing, as evidenced in the SDGs UHC target (3.8) as well as the “UHC billion” in WHO’s 13th General Programme of Work.
Almost all SEAR countries have developed and begun implementing policies and strategies to improve health care quality and safety. However, the reality is that after many years there is still a major problem with access to adequate quality care. In addition, there is fresh attention to positioning primary health care (PHC) as the cornerstone for UHC progress. Again, despite long political commitment to PHC, frontline public health services are often underutilized, in part because of perceptions about poor quality care. The question is: what should we do differently? Because some problems related to quality and safety are quite fundamental, getting the basics right could make a significant difference. A small group of regional and international experts participated in the informal consultation and identified strategic priorities across a range of action areas.
WHO Team
SEARO Regional Office for the South East Asia (RGO)
Editors
World Health Organization. Regional Office for South-East Asia
Number of pages
2
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