Half of all deaths globally every year are the result of acute or emergency conditions — arising from, for example, injuries and infections — rather than chronic or long-term illnesses. The acute disease burden in low- and middle-income countries is 4.4 times that of high-income countries. Contributing to this is a lack of resources, training, and health care infrastructure, which can mean that patients don’t receive the emergency care they need fast enough.
“It could be as simple as stopping traumatic bleeding long enough to get to a hospital, but if there’s nobody close to you … who knows to put pressure on a large wound, then you may not survive to get to the hospital,” explained John Meiners, chief of mission aligned businesses and health care solutions at the American Heart Association.
The Acute Care Action Network aims to change that. The network was launched by the American Heart Association, the World Health Organization, and the Laerdal Foundation following the adoption of an acute and emergency care resolution at this year’s World Health Assembly.
Bringing together key players working on strengthening emergency, critical, and operative care services, the network aims to improve acute care delivery in low-resource settings through the implementation of WHO’s tools, resources, and best practices.
“These are trainings in a classic sense as you might expect, but they’re also clinical decision support tools that help amplify the capacity of health workers who are faced every day with the acutely ill and injured,” said Dr. Teri Reynolds, the unit head of clinical services and systems in the department of integrated health services at WHO.
Watch the video to find out more about the Acute Care Action Network.