Drawing a comparison between the handling of Covid-19 and the Ebola crisis, Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon emphasized the necessity for global leaders to present a more cohesive approach to mitigate avoidable health repercussions for potential future pandemics.
The International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua), a nonprofit organization dedicated to healthcare improvement, launched the opening ceremony of its 2023 conference with a plenary lecture from Ban Ki-moon, Chairman of Ban Ki-moon Foundation for a Better Future and 8th Secretary-General of UN.
“When Ebola first hit, there was urgent action and reporting to the security council, and we had more harmonious leadership which allowed my proposal to be quickly adopted so that Ebola could be acknowledged as a serious threat to global health,” Ban said.
This facilitated the swift deployment of emergency response teams to West Africa, encompassing Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, under the framework of the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER).
Nonetheless, he observed a stark contrast in the approach to Covid-19, as global leaders concentrated on engaging in a blame game rather than directing their endeavors towards curtailing the virus's dissemination.
As a result, this 40-day delay led to the outbreak claiming 7 million lives over a span of three years, in stark contrast to the Ebola crisis which resulted in a death toll of 11,000 individuals, he remarked.
Ban said ISQua is happening at a critical juncture to boost technology, culture, and coproduction so world leaders gathered here can collaborate to advance sustainability and accelerate climate action to mitigate preventable deaths and ensure quality and safe health across the globe.
In particular, he urged participants gathered at the conference to work together to leverage the unique role of healthcare to achieve the goals of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) by its target date.
Ban commended ISQua for its green paper on high-quality, environmentally sustainable health care which aims to improve the knowledge of ISQua’s membership on the threats to health from climate change, and corresponding solutions to address this from a quality improvement and patient safety perspective.
The paper aims to establish ISQua’s role in responding to climate change while advocating for environmentally sustainable interventions to transform health systems and will be presented today at the conference in a workshop format to gather participant feedback.
ISQua President Jeffrey Braithwaite further underscored the significance of validating Korea's exceptional medical quality management system during the Seoul General Assembly. He portrayed this as a chance to institute novel benchmarks for medical quality management and patient safety across all nations.
"The global medical community is facing factors that have a significant impact on patients' safety and quality of care, such as soaring medical costs, aging, new infectious diseases and climate change, and medical inequality," said KoSQua President Lee Wang-jun.
Adapting the words of BTS J-Hope, Lee encouraged participants to take strength from coworkers when having a hard time and gain energy from them to continue.
Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) Vice Minister Park Min-soo also offered congratulatory remarks and expressed the government's commitment to safety with a total of 1,761 accredited medical institutions in Korea since accreditation started in 2011.
