The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), the Global Surgery Foundation (GSF), the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations International Computing Center (UNICC) and the Harvard Medical School Program in Global Surgery and Social Change (PGSSC) partnered to organize a roundtable discussion on the occasion of the first official World Patient Safety Day on September 17th 2019.

On the occasion of the first World Patient Safety Day, UNITAR, in partnership with the Global Surgery Foundation (GSF), Harvard Medical School’s Programme in Global Surgery and Social Change (PGSSC), lifebox, and Ariadne Labs, launched a video to raise awareness on the WHO Safe Surgical Checklist.

The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and Harvard Medical School's Program in Global Surgery and Social Change (PGSSC) signed a three-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), committing to bringing surgical, obstetrical and anaesthesia care into the mainstream discussions of global health and offering innovative capacity-building tools to support the development of improved surgical care systems globally.

Watch Lancet Editor in Chief Dr. Richard Horton's personal address at the 72nd World Health Assembly on May 20, 2019.

The WHO, UNITAR and the Harvard Medical School Program in Global Surgery and Social Change are developing a new platform to help build capacity in Global Surgery. This article was published originally in the official United Nations Magazine in Geneva.