More than 3 million people lost their lives due to unsafe care

September 17th is World Patient Safety Day. Patient safety is defined as "the organized framework of activities that create processes, behaviors, cultures, technologies, and environments that continuously and sustainably reduce risks in healthcare, reduce the occurrence of preventable harms, reduce the likelihood of errors, and mitigate the impact of harm when it does occur."

Unsafe healthcare is a significant public health problem affecting millions of patients worldwide, affecting more than one in ten. Recent estimates indicate that unsafe care, which involves situations where patient safety is not ensured, causes more than 3 million deaths worldwide each year, and nearly half of all harms resulting from unsafe care are preventable. According to data from the National Safety Reporting System used in Turkey, the total number of error reports in 2016 was 74,380, and in 2017, 101,841. The Ministry of Health 's failure to publish comprehensive and up-to-date data on the impact of unsafe healthcare is noteworthy.

CHP Deputy Prof. Dr. Kayıhan Pala stated that the harm inflicted on patients due to unsafe healthcare services also leads to irreversible loss of reputation in healthcare systems, and called on the Ministry of Health to ensure patient safety.

CAUSE OF DEATH AND DISABILITY

Patient harm caused by unsafe care is a leading cause of death and disability worldwide. Much of this harm is actually preventable. Harm caused by medications and treatment options is estimated to account for approximately 50 percent of overall preventable harm in medical care.

CHILD DEATHS ARE HIGH

Recalling that the theme of this year's World Patient Safety Day is "Safe Care for Every Newborn and Every Child," CHP's Pala highlighted patient safety policies in Turkey. Pointing out that Turkey still lags far behind Europe in terms of child patient safety, Pala said, "Turkey's infant mortality rate is unfortunately very high, at 9.1 per thousand in 2023, according to WHO statistics. This rate ranks Turkey seventh highest among the 53 countries in the World Health Organization European Region, where the average is 6.6 per thousand. Similarly, the neonatal mortality rate of 4.9 per thousand is also above the WHO European average of 4.1 per thousand, ranking it ninth highest among these countries. According to the Eurostat database, the infant mortality rate in our country is also three times higher than the European Union average of 3.3 per thousand."

ERROR RATES ARE INCREASING

Pala stated that pediatric emergency rooms and outpatient clinics, just like those for adults, are experiencing extremely high overcrowding, emphasizing that appointment times in some services have been reduced to as little as five minutes, making it impossible for physicians to provide effective and safe healthcare services. "The WHO, in its published list of targets, stated that the first step in improving child patient safety is to strengthen the child-family-physician relationship. The healthcare system in Türkiye often doesn't even allow physicians to listen to families' complaints in detail," Pala said. He added that some scientific studies have found that errors are made in prescribing medications for 1 in 8 children, posing an unacceptable patient safety problem in terms of healthcare quality. Prof. Dr. Pala emphasized the lack of transparency regarding patient safety in Türkiye, and that the Ministry fails to publish the data it collects in an up-to-date and systematic manner.