Dear Colleagues,

Greetings. Congratulations to each and every one of us on the phenomenal success of World Patient Safety Day 2022, dedicated to the theme of “Medication Safety”!

The members of this Global Patient Safety Network are and have been the driving force behind this outstanding achievement. Thank you for leading and uniting for the cause and for showing your commitment to “Medication Without Harm”. I am delighted to share that the response has been spectacular and extremely impressive. We have received inspiring reports from regions, countries and partners where a wide range of activities and events have been organized. Lighting up of landmark monuments, and iconic buildings in ‘orange’ has become a ‘living symbol’ of World Patient Safety Day year after year and the global solidarity it demonstrates. We encourage colleagues who have not shared the story of their events to please post them on GPSN or via the following e-survey available on the WPSD 2022 campaign page. We are working on a summary report illustrating all these amazing contributions.

On 15 September, WHO headquarters organized a global virtual event “Medication Without Harm” with interpretation in eight languages. There were 5191 registrants from around 165 countries across all WHO regions for the event, and it was attended by 1508 participants from 122 countries. The event structured around the strategic framework of the WHO Global Patient Safety Challenge: Medication Without Harm, featured presentations and a panel discussion by global patient safety leaders, medication safety experts and patient advocates. Recordings of this event will be made available soon on the Event’s page.

WHO also issued a News release to raise awareness of the media and the general public on the need to prioritize and address medication safety. In addition to the diversity of communication products, you can view the Director-General of WHO video message here and the Campaign video here.

During this year-long campaign, Patient Safety Flagship will be working with experts and partners to develop a series of Medication Safety Solutions (MSSs), among other technical products aimed at addressing medication safety in priority areas, with high burden of patient harm. Please note that Policy brief: Medication Without Harm; Systematic review: Global burden of medication–relatedharm; and MSSs – Medication safety in maternal and newborn care; and Medication safety for look-alike and sound-alike medicines will be published in the near future.

On behalf of the WHO Patient Safety Flagship, I would like to extend our deep appreciation and gratitude to all of you. Please do share your stories and amplify the messages of this year’s campaign. Know. Check. Ask.

Looking forward to strengthening the work on Medication Without Harm and maximize the impact of World Patient Safety Day 2022.

 

Thanks and best regards,

 

 

Dr Neelam DHINGRA

Unit Head

WHO Patient Safety Flagship/

A Decade of Patient Safety 2021-2030

World Health Organization

Geneva, Switzerland 

Email: dhingran@who.int 

Office: +41 22 791 4660   

Web: https://www.who.int/health-topics/patient-safety

As the partnership with SmartMed has been materialized the focus has gone to identifying potential international locations where Medication Safety Trainings (with the use of the SmartMed software Farmasys 6.0) can be held for students.

At this moment 2 locations are worked on: Rwanda & Mongolia.

To be continued.

memorandum of understanding

SmartMed & GIMS foundation work together on the worldwide availability and implementation of a state of the art IT-tool,

in English!

(with a focus on Medication Safety) for public pharmacies!

We are happy to announce that a MOU between the Association of Mongolian Pharmaceutical Professionals (AMPP) and GIMS foundation has been established.

At a NIA-meeting (Dutch Industry Pharmacists Association) a presentation was given about GIMS foundation.

The theme of much needed improvements in Medication Safety in LMIC’s was picked up well.

Beneath a fine abstract from a presentation at the Second Global Ministerial Summit on Patient Safety :

Medication Safety in Resource-limited Settings

Priyadarshani Galappatthy, Prof. Dr., Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, Professor and Head Department of Pharmacology, Sri Lanka

Abstract: Medication safety is a major concern contributing to patient safety particularly in resource-limited settings (RLS). Absence of reliable estimates of prevalence of adverse drug events, costs involved, causes of medication errors and evidence of effective interventions in RLS is a major limiting factor for ensuring medication safety in RLS.

Although there are nearly five times as many people living in Lower and Middle Income Countries (LMICs), the number of annual adverse drugs events calculated (6 million) is almost equal to the number of adverse drug events occurring in high income countries (5.8 million). Some key problems identified include lack of reliable data, safety culture, reporting systems, poor reporting, poor legibility of hand written prescriptions, absence of electronic support systems, limited number of healthcare professionals to serve the large numbers of patients, lack of clinical pharmacists services, higher prevalence of counterfeit and substandard medicines (up to 20-30% in some LMIC countries), availability of large numbers of generics of the same drug, lack of stringent drug regulatory mechanisms, poor medication literacy and absence of patient support mechanisms.

Possible interventions include identification of the baseline situation on epidemiology and causes of adverse drug events in RLS, the drugs involved in RLS, their severity, amenability of drug events to prevention, implementing routine quality testing of drugs throughout the drug supply chain, implementing successful national drug regulation, increasing the capacity of regulators and providing technological support and expertise for detecting and managing drug related issues.

Expected outcomes would be establishing the baseline on the epidemiology of medication incidents in RLS, implementing systems and practices for medication safety and significant reduction in medication errors (e.g. up to 50%) in the next 5 years. Future direction is towards a multidisciplinary approach with active involvement of all stakeholders in preventing medication incidents. Developing and implementing an individualized action plan for each country for the problems identified based on local data would be the key to ensuring medication safety in RLS.

Keywords: medication safety, medication errors, resource limited settings, lower-middle income countries, prevention

Speaker Information: Priyadarshani Galappatthy is a consultant physician, professor in Pharmacology and Head, Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

For the complete document use link:

Abstracts_and_Speakers_Patient_Safety Ministers Summit 2017