Everybody should have equitable access to quality assured and safe healthcare services. Improving patient safety is essential to maximizing the value of health care towards better health outcomes and for advancing universal health coverage.
Patient safety is everybody’s business (requiring collective efforts to create enabling healthcare environment, change culture and empower patients, families and communities as co-producers of health services). In the Western Pacific Region, WHO is committed to work with Member States in improving patient safety through strengthening regulation of health workforce, facilities and medicines, improving monitoring, and improving engagement and empowerment of patients and communities.
As a patient, caregiver, health worker or policy maker, you would recognize the importance of reducing medical errors and risks to patients in health care. 134 million cases of patient harm occur every year due to unsafe care in hospitals in low and middle-income countries. While 1 in 10 patients are harmed while receiving hospital care in high-income countries, as many as 1 out of every 4 hospitalizations results in patient harm each year in low- and middle-income countries.