Pubblicato il 23 febbraio 2023

Health care must be safe!

Discorso di apertura di Anne Lévy, direttrice dell’UFSP, in occasione del 5° Global Ministerial Summit on Patient Safety di Montreux il 23 febbraio 2023 – Fa stato la versione orale.

Dear Ministers,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen

On behalf of Switzerland, I welcome you to the Fifth Global Ministerial Summit on Patient Safety.
Switzerland is honored to host this important event.

This Summit brings together more than 600 participants from all over the world, including high-level representatives from over 80 countries.

Your presence confirms the global pertinence of this public health issue. Thank you for being here.

This event was initially planned for February 2020. However, we had to postpone it due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Patient Safety has not lost any of its urgency in the meantime.

On the contrary, COVID-19 has brought to light additional gaps in Patient Safety that we need to address. Therefore, it is more important than ever that we tackle this challenge.

I am grateful that we have the opportunity to do just that, here in Montreux, and continue our joint endeavor to strengthen Patient Safety.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We all agree: Nobody should be harmed through health care. Yet, many patients encounter an adverse event.

For example, unsafe hospital care leads to more than 3 million deaths worldwide each year and represents a global health burden similar to HIV/AIDS or road traffic accidents.

Patient Safety issues also concern well established medical procedures, that have saved countless lives. Radiology is a good example. In Switzerland, we had 100 reported incidents in radiology last year. This may seem like a rather small number, but we estimate that the dark figure corresponds to a factor of 20.

We have thus launched different measures, such as promoting a just culture in health facilities or a standardized digital incident reporting in radiology.

I would also like to draw your attention to an area that has been somewhat in the background of Patient Safety: mental health.

The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed new burdens on the mental health of populations worldwide, while disrupting health services and widening care disparities. This leads to compromised safety and imposes an enormous burden on patients and families.

I consider it very important to address such issues in the future and to strengthen our focus on mental health in the context of Patient Safety.

All of this shows that the challenges are still numerous. However, we have also made quite some progress.

Let us just think about the WHO Patient Safety Action Plan, for example.

I would also like to acknowledge the achievements by the preceding Global Ministerial

Summits on Patient Safety and our partners from the UK, Germany, Japan and Saudi Arabia.

These and other efforts by relevant stakeholders have given us a good basis. We know that Patient Safety is crucial, and we know effective measures to strengthen Patient Safety.

However, there is often a lack of adequate and sustainable implementation.

The time has come to close this implementation gap. This is why this summit focuses on «less harm, better care – from resolution to implementation.»

A unique feature of this event is that it unites experts and high-level decision makers in the same room. This is particularly important when addressing implementation.

Public health policies have to match the needs of health care. For this to happen, practitioners working with Patient Safety on a daily basis and decision makers have to work hand in hand.

We want to support this collaboration with this Summit. A pivotal element in this regard are the core messages. These core messages will reflect the most important insights from today’s discussions among experts and practitioners. They will be compiled at the end of the day and presented to ministers tomorrow.

Thereby, we make sure that decision makers can base their policy making on the latest evidence.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let us seize this opportunity and take another step towards reducing avoidable harm.

Switzerland will stay committed to this ambitious but essential goal.

We will carry on our work at national level. For example, we support a national programme on quality of long-term care in retirement and nursing homes.

However, the past has clearly shown that we are stronger together. In order to sustainably
improve Patient Safety, a strong global collaboration is essential.

Switzerland will thus continue to work with its partners and support the work of international organisations and platforms such as WHO and OECD.

We, of course, are also keen to keep contributing to the long-term success of the summit
series.

This brings me to the end of my opening remarks. Two days with a packed programme lie ahead of us.

I am very much looking forward to this event and wish us all a successful summit.

Thank you!