Advancing care beyond our borders: Sunnybrook’s role as a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Critical Care and Emergencies

When communities face crises—whether an infectious disease outbreak like SARS, COVID-19 or Ebola, natural disasters, such as the recent earthquakes in Venezuela, or other large-scale emergencies – Sunnybrook steps up to play a leadership role at local, national and international levels.

Sunnybrook was recently named a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Critical Care and Emergencies, acknowledging the organization’s expertise in emergency preparedness, disaster medicine and infection prevention and control.

In its new role with the WHO, Sunnybrook will be asked to support in multiple areas, including its technical expertise on infectious diseases with public health implications, by drawing on frontline experience with SARS, MERS-CoV, Ebola, and COVID-19.

The designation also involves a research and data collection component. Sunnybrook will support the WHO through systematic reviews, surveys, observational studies, and clinical trials in critical care, trauma, and pandemic preparedness, to help shape global clinical practice.

Lastly, by training health-care workers, the hospital will create and deliver training programs to teach life-saving skills to doctors and nurses in areas that need it most.

“We are the first WHO collaborating centre focused on acute trauma and critical care response,” explains Dr. Neill Adhikari, a Critical Care Specialist at Sunnybrook. “By sharing our medical knowledge with communities in need, we can make a difference for patients both at home and around the world.”

The designation builds on several years of collaboration between Sunnybrook clinicians and the WHO in the areas of outbreak response, critical care training, research and guideline development, including for the current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.

Sunnybrook is uniquely qualified for this role. The organization is the first trauma centre outside the United States to be verified by the American College of Surgeons, with the Tory Trauma Program treating the highest number of traumatically or critically injured and burned patients in Canada. This is on top of leading locally, nationally and internationally in training and education programs crossing trauma, burn and critical care.

“We have a long history of taking our local leadership to the global stage,” says Dr. Andy Smith, President & CEO, Sunnybrook. “This WHO role allows us to take the advanced, life-saving care we use here every day and share it with patients worldwide.”

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