Palliative Care Advocacy at the World Health Assembly 2025

Once again, palliative care advocates ensured that the voice of palliative care was heard at the premier event for global health, the World Health Assembly (WHA). The WHA is the governing body of the WHO where resolutions are passed that direct the Global Programme of Work for WHO. In 2014 our palliative care resolution was passed and still is on the WHO work plan. As new resolutions are passed, we work to ensure that palliative care is included.

This year there were resolutions and actions involving non-communicable disease, cervical cancer, lung health, the pandemic response, mental health and social connection, the healthcare workforce, women’s health, universal health coverage, health emergencies, and so forth. WHO’s funding has been significantly reduced due to withdrawal of the US from WHO and global health funding generally. However, during the meeting other countries are stepping up to support WHO. We have a well-functioning WHO Palliative Care working group, led by WHO palliative care consultant, Dr Megan Doherty who we work closely with. Together we planned an important side event at WHA (there are many of these each year) titled: Accelerating Progress in Universal Access to Palliative Care: Learning from Country Experiences.

At this event presentations from the Philippines and Georgia highlighted progress, the World Innovation Summit on Health recommendations were presented, WHO staff presented, and there was a panel discussion about overcoming inequities. Over 80 people registered and most of the event can be viewed at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KzISo8IVpkUTxn8PpZTjktLYrFSFmheP/view?usp=drive_link

There were additional side events related to palliative care by IAHPC on Interfaith Advocacy and the preliminary report on Balanced National Policies for Controlled Medicines to Ensure Access and Safety (https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/B09419 ) an important tool for us to help improve access to medicines. WHPCA and IAHPC gave verbal interventions on the key above topics and supported constituency statements. We will continue our work but need your support to do this work and to make sure the delegations from your countries speak out to support palliative care.