WHO: Need to end unsafe medication practices

New Delhi, September 17

On World Patient Safety Day on Saturday, the WHO highlighted the urgent need to end unsafe medication practices and medication errors.

Unsafe medication practices and errors can occur at different stages of the medication use and can result from weak medication systems and human factors such as fatigue, poor environmental conditions, or staff shortages.

Under a new Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021–2030, the WHO aims to advance policies, strategies and actions to eliminate all sources of avoidable risk and harm to patients and health workers by addressing counterfeit and substandard products, and enhancing patient safety and reporting systems.

It affects intensive care, highly specialised or surgical care, and emergency medicine.

The WHO has several focus areas. The first is to establish patient safety incident reporting and learning systems. Second is to develop and implement standard operating procedures for safe medication use. Third, help health workers to stay updated on safe medication practices. And fourth, increase awareness about the importance of using medication safely.

In low- and middle-income countries, including South-East Asia, patient harm due to unsafe care contributes to an estimated 13.4 crore adverse events annually, resulting in around 26 lakh deaths.