Every year on 17th September, the world pauses to mark World Patient Safety Day (WPSD)—an initiative of the World Health Organisation to raise global awareness about the importance of making healthcare safe for all. The theme for 2025, as in years past, calls on governments, professionals, institutions, and communities to prioritise the well-being of patients by reducing avoidable harm in healthcare systems.
For Africa, this day is not just symbolic; it is an urgent reminder of the work we must do to safeguard the lives of millions of people who trust our health systems daily.
The African context
Patient safety is a global challenge, but Africa’s stakes are exceptionally high. Weak health systems, shortages of skilled healthcare workers, fragmented supply chains, limited infrastructure, and resource constraints amplify unsafe care risks. Studies suggest that up to 1 in 10 patients in low- and middle-income countries suffer harm while receiving care, with medication errors, surgical mistakes, and hospital-acquired infections among the most common culprits.
In Africa, where preventable deaths from malaria, maternal complications, and infectious diseases remain unacceptably high, patient safety is not an optional goal; it is a moral imperative.
Why patient safety matters
1. Trust in healthcare systems: Patients must be confident that when they seek care, the system will heal them, not harm them. Safety builds trust, and trust drives utilisation.
2. Equity and justice: Unsafe care disproportionately affects the poor, rural dwellers, and vulnerable groups who already face barriers in accessing quality health.
3. Economic sustainability: Preventable medical errors cost billions annually in wasted resources, prolonged hospital stays, and loss of productivity. For fragile African economies, these costs deepen the cycle of poverty and ill health.
4. Resilience in health emergencies: From Ebola to COVID-19, Africa has learnt that resilient systems protect patients, workers, and communities from harm, even in crises.
Priorities for Africa on patient safety
To align with the global patient safety agenda and contextualise it for Africa, we must focus on five priorities:
1. Leadership and governance: Governments must develop national patient safety policies and integrate them into universal health coverage frameworks. Leadership at the ministerial and institutional levels is the master key to safe care.
2. Workforce training and culture: Beyond clinical skills, our healthcare professionals need continuous training in safety principles—teamwork, communication, reporting errors without blame, and learning from near misses. Building a “safety culture” is as essential as building infrastructure.
3. Medicine and supply chain safety: Fake, substandard, or poorly stored medicines endanger lives daily. Strengthening regulation, adopting track-and-trace technologies, and empowering pharmacists as gatekeepers of quality medicines are critical.
4. Digital transformation and data: Safe systems are data-driven. Africa must adopt digital dashboards, pharmacovigilance tools, and early warning systems to monitor safety risks and track progress transparently.
5. Patient and family engagement: Patients are not passive recipients of care; they must be partners in safety. Education campaigns, community dialogues, and feedback mechanisms should empower patients to demand safe and respectful care.
Reflections and call to action
World Patient Safety Day should not be reduced to a calendar event for speeches and posters. It must be a movement for transformation in African healthcare. I often recall the words of Nelson Mandela: “Safety and security don’t just happen; they are the result of collective consensus and public investment.”
For Africa, this consensus requires political will, professional commitment, and community ownership. We must remember that every unsafe injection, every wrong prescription, and every preventable maternal death is not a statistic; it is a human life cut short, a family broken, and a society diminished.
Action points
• Ministries of Health should establish National Patient Safety Councils with cross-sector participation.
• Hospitals and primary healthcare centres must implement mandatory safety protocols—from hand hygiene to surgical checklists.
• Professional bodies in pharmacy, medicine, and nursing should incorporate patient safety competencies into curricula and continuous professional development.
• Development partners should align aid and investments with patient safety outcomes, not just infrastructure delivery.
• Communities must be mobilised through faith groups, media, and civil society to make safety a citizen demand, not just a policy target.
Conclusion
World Patient Safety Day is a call to remember that behind every clinical chart is a story, a face, a life. Africa’s path to health transformation, universal coverage, stronger systems, better outcomes, runs through the gate of patient safety.
Therefore, as leaders, professionals, and citizens, let us commit to the fact that from 2025 to 2030, Africa will no longer be a continent where unsafe care is tolerated. Instead, let it be said that we embraced the vision of a safe, people-centred healthcare system where patients come first.
Because in the end, patient safety is human safety and human safety is the foundation of human dignity.
Prof. Lere Baale: CEO, Business School Netherlands International
