Priority Assistive Products List (APL)

Priority Assistive Products List (APL): WHO has launched a survey to identify the 50 top technologies people need worldwide to improve their lives. The survey, issued in the world’s 50 most spoken languages, will use the information gathered to build the WHO Priority Assistive Products List (APL), a tool that will set the standard for the most essential assistive products that must be available in a health system.

WHO estimates that today, more than one billion people need assistive technology. With a global ageing population and rise in noncommunicable diseases, this number will rise beyond two billion by 2050, with many older people needing two or more products as they age.
Assistive technology enables people to live healthy, productive, independent, and dignified lives; to participate in education, the labour market and social life. It can reduce the need for formal health and support services, long-term care and the burden on caregivers. Without assistive technology, people are often excluded, isolated and locked into poverty; also increasing the impact and the burden of morbidity and disability.
Today only 1 in 10 people have access to assistive technology, due to a lack of financing, availability, awareness, trained personnel, and high costs. There are already large underserved populations for basic assistive products such as hearing aids, even in high-income countries. Where available, an astonishingly high proportion of assistive products are abandoned by users (estimates run as high as 75%). This represents a wider system failure and lack of appropriate policy across the world...