The Ministry of Health (MoH) is marking the World Patient Safety Day. Hospitals and health centres (HCs) in Bahrain are organizing health-related activities focusing on patient safety and increasing awareness including hands cleanliness to prevent contamination or contagion to ensure safety of patients, Head of Quality & Risk Management Panel Dr. Khatoon Shubbar.
Patient and visitors’ safety includes increasing awareness, prevention of incidental falls, and to conform to prescribed course of medical treatment. Patients should ask questions to get the right answers and accurately tell the doctor about their case history. Awareness also includes training of all HCs workers in how to cope with fire incidents and risk.
The World Health Organization (WHO) marks the World Patient Safety Day on September 17, this year themed ‘Speak up for patient safety’. “No one should be harmed while seeking or providing health care. However, too many patients are unnecessarily put at risk by avoidable health care-associated infections that threaten the safe functioning of health systems and adversely impact on the quality of health services. This is even more true in conflict-affected zones,” says Dr Dorit Nitzan, Acting Regional Emergency Director, WHO/Europe. “Through our emergency response activities, we at WHO work with partners to ensure that infection prevention and control measures exist and are used in health-care facilities in these especially vulnerable settings.”

