The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the five members of the World Health Professions Alliance (WHPA): FDI World Dental Federation (FDI), International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP), International Council of Nurses (ICN), and World Physiotherapy, and World Medical Association (WMA). Together, these five organisations represent more than 41 million health professionals worldwide and assemble essential knowledge and experience from the key health professions in more than 130 countries.
The signing ceremony represents an historic event, bringing together the five global organisations representing the world’s dentists, pharmacists, nurses, physiotherapists, and physicians with WHO to enhance their joint collaboration on protecting and investing in the health workforce to provide safe, quality, and equitable care in all settings.
“There is no health without health workers,” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “With this MoU, WHPA and WHO will support healthcare professional associations and governments to protect and invest in the multidisciplinary teams of health workers needed to deliver essential health services and prevent and respond to emergencies.”
The new MoU reflects the importance of investing in the health workforce through a multi-stakeholder integrated approach. It provides a framework for joint action between the five organisations and the WHO. They specifically commit to collaborate on priority health workforce issues as well as universal health coverage, non-communicable diseases, and ageing populations. The framework will also contribute to reinforcing national and regional health systems and services.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has shown us that today’s public health problems cannot be solved by one country or one organisation or one profession by itself,” said Enzo Bondioni, Chair of the WHPA and Executive Director of FDI. “Through collaboration between stakeholders, we can tackle interlinked global health challenges by taking joint action to protect and strengthen the health workforce and make progress towards universal health coverage.”
The WHPA and WHO have pursued common goals prior to and through the pandemic. Both have worked to ensure vaccination of health and care workers across all countries and continued advocacy with countries to strengthen health systems, including by providing better recognition, workplace environments and decent working conditions for health and care workers.
