Dear HIFA colleagues,
NPR asked the question: What is your wish to improve life on earth in 2025? to 11 global health professionals and their answers are here:
https://www.hifa.org/dgroups-rss/npr-what-your-wish-improve-life-earth-2025
My wish for 2025 is that we shall take a major step towards universal access to reliable healthcare information. That step has been articulated by the 2410 respondents of the HIFA Global Consultation on Universal Access.
www.hifa.org/report
www.hifa.org/infographic
The consultation calls on WHO to explicitly champion the goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information and to convene stakeholders to develop a global strategy for its realisation.
In 1997 I co-authored an editorial in the BMJ with Richard Smith (then editor-in-chief) and Carol Priestley (then director of INASP). We wrote: 'Providing access to reliable health information for health workers in developing countries is potentially the single most cost effective and achievable strategy for sustainable improvement in health care.' This statement remains unchallenged.
At that time we believed that universal access to reliable healthcare information could be achieved by 2015 and in 2004 I co-authored a paper in The Lancet with Fiona Godlee (Richard Smith's successor) and colleagues: 'Can we achieve health information for all by 2015?' As a result of that paper, HIFA was launched in Mombasa Kenya in 2006 under its original name HIFA2015, Healthcare Information For All by 2015, in alignment with the Millennium Development Goals.
But universal access remains elusive. (We define universal access as meeting the healthcare information needs of the general public, health workers and policymakers, in the right language and format and relevant to the specific context.) The main reason for this failure is that there has been a severe lack of political and financial commitment. Even today, there is no major organisation (or funding agency or government) that has explicitly committed to this goal.
HIFA continues to work with and lobby WHO, most recently as an NGO in official relations. Over the past 2 years there have been signs that WHO may be on the verge of publicly committing to universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA's key objective in 2025 is to encourage WHO to finally commit to universal access. When WHO champions universal access explicitly, this will be a game changer for global health. The logical next step would be to convene stakeholders to develop a global strategy. HIFA stands ready to support.
All of this has only been possible thanks to you, our members. Together we have persuaded more than 400 organisations worldwide to officially endorse the HIFA vision of universal access. As a result of our collective advocacy, two global professional bodies have now committed to universal access: the World Medical Association, representing 10 million doctors, in 2019; and the International Federation of Library Associations, representing the world's library and information professionals, in 2024. We are now actively working with other global professional bodies to add their support in 2025.
In 2 weeks' time we anticipate that the WHO Executive Board will approve Global Healthcare Information Network (the NGO that administers HIFA) for a second 3-year term as an NGO in official relations with WHO. At that point we shall be able to share with you the HIFA-WHO Collaboration Plan 2025-2027, which is based on the concept of universal access to reliable healthcare information. We look forward to implementing this with your support.
Best wishes, Neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org