English
EspañolOver 3000 patient advocates in Asia-Pacific come together calling for recovering together through compassion, insight and co-creation
Discussions held at the APPC 2021 all highlighted that patient, family, and community engagement in healthcare decision-making is critical in improving the effectiveness, efficiency, quality, safety and equity of health systems and health technologies development ecosystem.
The congress concluded with a pledge for patient-centred healthcare where the patient is not only the user, but a contributor and a co-creator to its development and called upon all WHO SEA and WHO WP region Member States, patients, families, industry, and other stakeholder partners to undertake the following short-term measures, mid-term measures and long-term measures:
Short-term measures
- To bring back focus on UHC 2030.
- Invest more in digital health literacy and adopt the syndemic approach to addressing the COVID-19 pandemic and the interaction and amplification of biological and social determinants that are important for COVID19 prognosis, treatment, and health policy.
- To accelerate the COVID19 vaccination programmes and make them accessible to cover all their populations. We must address vaccine equity. No one is safe until everyone is safe in the region.
- To invest in the research and development of new effective treatments to reduce the heavy mortality and morbidity amongst COVID19 patients in the region.
- To invest in finding treatments for new and emerging diseases and the interplay between environment and health.
- To support WHO Solidarity Trials.
Mid-term measures
- To invest in and revisit the WHO compassionate integrated and people-centred Universal Health Coverage framework.
- To invest in integrated health systems because patient journeys in a fragmented healthcare systems are unsafe, ineffective, and cost more when compared to integrated health systems.
- To invest in and drive the research and development in digital healthcare in the region
- To leap forward and invest in genomic medicine and drive research and development and uptake of personalised healthcare and precision medicine in the region.
- To personalise the full spectrum of health services, from health promotion to prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and palliative care.
Long-term measures
- Use effective institution, legislative, policy, practice, and standards framework to create an enabling ecosystem for patient engagement and co-creation at all levels of decision-making in our health systems.
- Use effective institution, legislative, policy, practice, and standards framework to institutionalise patient engagement in regulatory and health technology assessment bodies in the region.
- Undertake more research and development to provide patient preference studies and real-world evidence to regulatory and health technology assessment bodies in the region.
- Move to a better mix of self-care and health professional supported healthcare with a focus on chronic non-communicable diseases, ageing and rare diseases.
- Amplify digital healthcare and the ensure equity and equality by building robust infrastructure.
- Make primary healthcare the bedrock of Universal Health Coverage 2030.
- Invest in the Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021-2030 and ensure all Member States have robust patient and family engagement institutionalised to eliminate all avoidable patient harm.
--- In case you didn't get a chance to tune in live, or for those wanting to watch a session again, all session recordings are now available on our YouTube channel for you to watch on-demand here.
The 3rd Asia-Pacific Patients Congress was co-organized by the International Alliance of Patients’ organizations (IAPO), Philippine Alliance of Patient Organizations (PAPO) and SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medical Center.
