Medical errors one of leading causes of death in healthcare facilities

KARACHI: The Federal Ministry of National Health Services, with the support from the World Health Organization (WHO), Pakistan, has started working on the National Patient Safety and Quality Policy and Strategy to save patients from medical errors and harms at healthcare facilities in the country, officials said.

"The National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination (NHS,R&C) with the support of WHO Pakistan, has launched a study on medical errors at public health facilities in Pakistan. This study will provide data and guidelines to prepare national patient safety and quality policy and strategy to prevent medical errors and harms inflicted on patients at health facilities throughout the country”, Dr. Palitha Mahipala, WHO’s Country Representative to Pakistan, told a patient safety conference, which concluded here in Karachi the other day.

The First National Patient Safety Conference was jointly organized by the WHO Pakistan in collaboration with Sindh Health department, Indus Hospital and Health Network (IHHN). It was attended and addressed by government officials from Sindh, Balochistan, Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP), provincial healthcare commissions as well as private health sector.

Dr. Palitha Mahipala maintained that medical errors were a global health issue and challenge, which lead to around 2.6 million deaths annually worldwide. Over 134 million medical errors are reported worldwide and added that WHO has come up with a Global Patient Safety Action Plan, which provides guidelines and safety measures to reduce practices that lead to harms to patients.

He maintained that WHO Pakistan has trained over 3,000 healthcare professionals, clinicians, workers and technicians in the area of patient safety and hoped that Pakistan’s national action plan, which is being formulated with the assistance of WHO Pakistan, would help in reducing mortality due to medical errors at healthcare settings.

Balochistan Health Minister Syed Ahsan Shah said training of healthcare workers and paramedics was very important to ensure patient safety and added that owing to medical errors, around 2.6 million people die in the third world countries.

“Everyday, 700 people die due to medical errors in the developing countries of the world, which is a very alarming situation for us. The most disturbing situation is for pregnant women, who are harmed and die mostly due to negligence and medical errors in Pakistan”, Syed Ahsan Shah said and added that one of the major reasons behind infant mortality rate in Pakistan was medical errors.

Highlighting the poor Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) at public and private healthcare facilities in the country, he said patients were getting hospital-acquired infections, while during the pandemic, patients and even the healthcare professionals were contracting COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, which were leading to harms and deaths of patients.

Parliamentary Secretary Health Sindh Qasim Siraj Soomro said issues of primary healthcare were burdening the overall healthcare in Sindh and added that these issues were surfacing due to unclean drinking water. He added that the Sindh government was spending huge funds on provision of health services to people through public and private health facilities like Indus Hospital and Health Network (IHHN).

“Yesterday, we discussed minimum standardization at public health facilities. We are going to focus on Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) and safe disposal of hospital waste. We are working to prevent the spread of HIV and other infections after the Ratodero outbreak of HIV among children”, he added.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of IHHN Prof Dr Abdul Bari said there should be medical boards at every public and private healthcare facility, saying hundreds of thousands of people were dying every year due to medical errors in Pakistan while medication errors, especially misuse of antibiotics, were resulting in Anti-Microbial Resistance (AMR), which has become a great cause of concern in the world.

“In these circumstances, this conference would provide recommendations to the federal and provincial governments to ensure patient safety and making patient friendly hospitals like the Indus Hospital and Aga Khan Hospital”, Prof. Abdul Bari added.

Former director Pharmacy Services of DRAP Dr Abdur Rashid said major medical errors that lead to deaths of patients were medication errors, Infection Prevention and Control (IPC), Hospital Acquired Infections, Sepsis, Pathological and Radiological Errors, Embolism and Surgical Procedures and called for working on these areas to improve patient safety in Pakistan.

Patient safety and digital health guru Dr Zakiuddin Ahmed, as well as healthcare commission officials from the four provinces and the Centre, health safety experts from private health facilities as well as IHHN also attended the conference and presented their studies and research on the issue. Organizers said the recommendations of the conference would be forwarded to the federal and provincial health authorities for implementation.