The 1^st African Patients Virtual Regional Meeting, the first of its kind, was an initiative of the World Patient Alliance (WPA) in collaboration with its strong network of patient organizations in Africa. The initiative was part and parcel of the WPA’s long time quality and safe care advocacy around the globe, as well as the engagement and empowerment of patient organizations around the globe.

The meeting was held on the August, 25,2022, from 8:00am until 4:00pm EAT. And attracted over 100 participants who were patients, patient’s organizations, as well as other private and public sector players from Africa and around the globe, who shared learning experiences on promoting patient engagement and empowerment to achieve quality and safe care in Africa with a specific focus on Universal Health Coverage.

Ultimately the meeting promoted the alignment of patient engagement and empowerment goals amongst the different stakeholders and the strengthening of a patient organizations’ community who past the event will advocate for quality and safe care, and this approach very much concretized the event theme; Raising patient voices as a pathway to quality and safe care in Africa.

The World Patient Alliance understands that creating and empowering patient-based support systems to create interventions that promote Universal Health Coverage is critical in addressing barriers to quality and safe health care in Africa. That is why during the event, participants presented and discussed the underlying issues of why Over 615million people in Africa can’t access essential services and then the services available are of every low quality and there is low sense of ownership and trust in the health care systems. The participants also presented on current interventions that are addressing barriers to quality health care.

The barriers to achieving Universal Health Coverage and recent interventions to address the barriers, were articulated into two sessions;

• One which presented an opportunity to the global and high-level health stakeholders to present on the Universal Health Coverage framework of actions to promote quality and safe care in Africa;
• And the other, during which patient organizations and health experts shared case studies on patient engagement in promoting access to quality and safe care.

Based on the knowledge sharing and learnings during the event, WPA, its members and partners consolidated and created a road map to bring patient organizations, patient communities as well as private and public sector partners, to start contributing to the Universal Health Coverage framework of actions to achieve quality and safe care for the “African patient, family and community”

For more information, please view the report.