The Montreux Patient Safety Charter encourages action to address avoidable harm in healthcare

The Fifth Global Ministerial Summit on Patient Safety was held in Montreux, Switzerland on February 23 and 24 under the slogan “Less Harm, Better Care – From Solution to Implementation”

The Fifth Global Ministerial Summit on Patient Safety closed in Montreux, Switzerland on February 24, following the adoption of the Montreux Patient Safety Charter with recommended actions to address avoidable health care harm. This was the first global ministerial summit on patient safety to be held after the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed high risk of unsafe care for patients, healthcare workers and the general public, and made visible a series of security flaws in all key components of healthcare systems. The summit was hosted by the Swiss government.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the WHO, participated in the Summit alongside 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 culture of safety and strengthen reporting and learning systems; support the health workforce and strengthen their capacity; strengthen data systems; and involve patients and families in their own care. dr. Tedros announced that the theme of World Patient Safety Day 2023 will be “Engaging patients for patient safety”.

In Montreux, delegations from more than 80 countries discussed the gaps and key challenges for the implementation of the World Health Assembly resolution (WHA72.6). “Global action for patient safety” and a global plan for patient safety, Global Action Plan for Patient Safety 2021-2030: Towards Eliminating Avoidable Harm in Healthcare.

Despite progress in addressing patient safety challenges worldwide, concerted efforts are needed to ensure the safety of patients and healthcare professionals, the delegations noted, and emphasized that lessons learned from the COVID-19 crisis have enormous potential to build safer and more resilient healthcare systems.

The Montreux Patient Safety Charter, adopted at the summit, reaffirms that harm to patients in healthcare is an urgent public health problem, relevant to countries of all income backgrounds and geographies and therefore a shared global challenge. Identifies actions for countries to close gaps in patient safety implementation, including treating patient safety as a global public health priority, building on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, deepening partnerships, collaborations and mutual learning, and engaging patients and their families. The charter also calls for setting priorities for patient safety, including drug safety, safe surgery, infection prevention and control, and antimicrobial resistance.

Unsafe care is one of the leading causes of death and disability in the world. It is particularly acute in resource-constrained environments. In the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, 2.6 million people died each year due to safety lapses in hospitals in lower-income countries. Rich countries are not immune: almost 15 percent of hospital costs and activity in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries can be attributed to treatment safety failures.

It is estimated that more than half of all patient injuries can be prevented by working together to create a safer healthcare system for everyone and by building a culture of safety that emphasizes continuous improvement, learning and innovation.

The Montreux Summit builds on previous Global Ministerial Summits on Patient Safety that have raised awareness of the burden of avoidable patient harm in healthcare and encouraged strategic approaches to strengthening patient safety, from London (2016), to Bonn (2017), to Tokyo (2018) and in Jeddah (2019).

The sixth summit will be held in Chile in 2024.