For the very first time, on 17 September 2019, World Patient Safety Day will be marked with events around the world to raise awareness of the need to establish patient safety as a global health priority. The day brings stakeholders together in an effort to reduce the unintended harm caused by healthcare.

No one should be harmed in health care. And yet thousands of patients in the world suffer avoidable harm or are put at risk of injury while receiving health care every single day. Patient safety is the prevention of harm and the reduction of risk of injury and errors in health care. In high-income countries, it is estimated that 1 in 10 patients is harmed while receiving hospital care. The available evidence suggests that 134 million adverse events occur annually in hospitals in low- and middle-income countries, contributing to 2.6 million deaths every year.

World Patient Safety Day builds on a successful series of Global Ministerial Summits on Patient Safety pioneered in 2016 at London as well as relentless advocacy by leaders from all sectors — politicians, patient champions, patient safety experts and global public health leaders. The establishment of an annual World Patient Safety Day will give an opportunity to providers, seekers and managers of health care services to join a platform and express solidarity and compassion to make health care safer. The origin of the day is firmly grounded in the fundamental principle of medicine – First, to do no harm.

The objective of the very first World Patient Safety Day is to raise global awareness about patient safety with the theme ‘Patient Safety: a global health priority’. Openness and ‘blame-free’ environments are the minimum conditions for enacting a safety culture. Hence, to promote open communication for learning from errors and to emphasize the importance of patient safety, the slogan for World Patient Safety Day 2019 is “Speak up for patient safety!”

WHO OFFICIAL WEBPAGE - https://www.who.int/campaigns/
 world-patient-safety-day/2019