Ministers, funders, implementators, researchers and policy makers convene in Geneva for World Health Assembly official side-event co-organised by WFSA and the Ethiopian Ministry of Health.
On 18 May 2026 at World Health Organization Headquarters in Geneva, global health leaders gathered for the WHA side event “From Global Strategy to Country Impact: Scaling Emergency, Critical and Operative Care”. The discussion focused on how countries can move from global commitments to practical, life-saving improvements in ECO care.
The event highlighted a shared message: ECO care only works when systems are integrated, and when investment reaches the workforce delivering care every day.
Across the discussion, simple interventions were repeatedly highlighted as the highest yield investments in health systems. Community first aid training was described as reducing mortality by up to 30 percent, while structured hospital triage systems were noted as reducing mortality by around 50 percent. The consistent message was that impact does not depend on complexity, but on implementation.
Rwanda’s Minister of Health, Sabin Nsanzimana, illustrated what this looks like at system level. He described how reforms in emergency care and ambulance coordination have reduced response times in Kigali from 45 minutes to 15 minutes. He also stressed the importance of integration, noting that “there is no way we can do it alone. Partnership matters.”
From Ethiopia, Minister Dr. Mekdes Daba highlighted how expanding emergency obstetric and critical care closer to communities is changing outcomes. She pointed to major gains in access, explaining that “we have increased care closer to the community and reduced referrals because services are now available at primary level.”
WFSA SAFE Programme: Building Anaesthesia Capacity as Part of the Emergency Continuum
A central contribution came from Dr Carolina Haylock-Loor, President of WFSA, who placed anaesthesia training firmly within the wider emergency, critical and operative care continuum.
She described the SAFE programme as a practical training model built for real-world constraints. “SAFE is a train-the-trainer model designed for limited resource settings,” she explained, emphasising that sustainability depends on building local capacity rather than external dependency.
Her key message focused on system ownership. “The goal is not to fly in experts for a few days and leave,” she said. “The goal is to help countries build their own training capacity, their own teachers, their own leaders.” In her framing, long-term impact depends on whether training systems remain inside countries, not outside them.
She also stressed that emergency care pathways are inherently connected. “Acute care does not happen in silos,” she said. “Patients move from emergency to theatre to recovery to critical care.” SAFE, alongside WHO Basic Emergency Care, was presented as part of a single continuum that supports the full patient journey, rather than isolated clinical domains.
Scaling What Works: From Pilots to National Systems
The discussion also highlighted how successful models move from small pilots to national scale when financing and systems align. The Safer Births Bundle of Care in Tanzania was presented as a strong example of this transition, showing major reductions in maternal and newborn mortality at scale.
Dr Luke O’Dowd from the Global Financing Facility explained that “we are not talking about boutique pilots, but about 300,000 births at scale,” noting that the programme achieved a 40 percent reduction in newborn deaths and a 75 percent reduction in maternal deaths after national scale-up.
From Papua New Guinea, Dr Ezra Downey highlighted a different challenge: system connectivity. He described how “referral can be delayed by distance, weather, road conditions and communication gaps,” underscoring how geography and infrastructure shape emergency outcomes as much as clinical training does.
Nepal’s contribution reinforced the same theme from a different angle, focusing on implementation strength in constrained settings. The country experience highlighted that when basic emergency care training is combined with structured systems and local ownership, outcomes improve even in low-resource and geographically difficult environments.
Across all settings, the message aligned: emergency, critical and operative care only works when it is integrated, funded, and trained as a system, not a set of separate programmes.
Watch the YouTube recording of the event👇
