"Health for all, primary healthcare, universal health coverage and sustainable development goals are empty shells without timely access to and availability of health information."
Dr Najeeb Al-Shorbaji, former Director, Knowledge, Ethics and Research Department, World Health Organization, Geneva
5 million people die every year due to poor-quality care in low- and middle-income countries [1] (indeed a discussion on HIFA has revealed this is a gross underestimate as it looks only at facility-level care; it does not include poor-quality care in the home and community). The vast majority are in low- and middle-income countries. A major contributing factor is lack of availability and use of relevant, reliable healthcare information.
The World Health Organization defines Universal Health Coverage as “all people have access to the full range of quality health services they need, when and where they need them, without financial hardship”. Thanks to HIFA advocacy, universal access to reliable healthcare information is now widely recognised as a prerequisite for Universal Health Coverage [2,3].
Access to Health Information Under International Human Rights Law
From 2008-2012, HIFA collaborated with the New York Law School to evaluate access to healthcare information under international human rights law. The findings were published in December 2012 as a White Paper: Access to Health Information Under International Human Rights Law. The paper concludes that healthcare information is an essential component of many identified and established human rights. States party to treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights have a legal obligation under International Human Rights Law to progressively meet the healthcare information needs of all citizens.
Information is a key component of the basic needs of all healthcare providers. These needs may be summarised as:
• Skills
• Equipment
• Information
• Systems
• Medicines
• Incentives
• Communication facilities.
This spells the acronym SEISMIC - a seismic shift is needed to address the needs of front-line healthcare providers in low-income countries. For too long their needs have been ignored. We need an approach that is not only patient-centred but is also health-worker-centred.
HIFA focuses on the Information needs of healthcare providers, but clearly the full range of needs must be met to empower healthcare providers to deliver high quality care. HIFA collaborates with other networks and initiatives that address other needs of healthcare providers, as well as those that address broader issues of health, human rights and international development.
[1] Kruk M et al. Mortality due to low-quality health systems in the universal health coverage era: a systematic analysis of amenable deaths in 137 countries. The Lancet, Volume 392, Issue 10160, 2203 - 2212
[2] Royston R etal. Universal access to essential health information: accelerating progress towards universal health coverage and other SDG health targets: BMJ Global Health 2020;5:e002475
[3] Muscat D et al. Universal health information is essential for universal health coverage. Fam Med Community Health 2023 May;11(2)