17 September 2026
Theme: “Safe Care for Noncommunicable Diseases”
Slogan: “Safe Care for Life!”
On World Patient Safety Day 2026, the African Institute for Healthcare Quality Safety & Accreditation (AfIHQSA) joins patients, families, healthcare professionals, health leaders, governments and partners across the world in reaffirming a fundamental principle: no one should be harmed while receiving healthcare.
We salute the millions of frontline healthcare workers across Africa and beyond whose commitment, professionalism and resilience continue to sustain healthcare delivery, often under difficult circumstances. We also recognise patients, families and communities as essential partners in creating safer health systems.
AfIHQSA commends the World Health Organization (WHO) for its sustained leadership of the global patient-safety agenda. World Patient Safety Day was established through World Health Assembly resolution WHA72.6 in 2019 and has provided an important platform for countries to strengthen action to reduce avoidable harm in healthcare.
The 2026 theme, “Safe Care for Noncommunicable Diseases,” is particularly timely. Noncommunicable diseases account for approximately 74% of deaths globally, and people living with NCDs often interact with health services repeatedly over many years. Every diagnosis, prescription, procedure, referral, transition of care and interaction with the health system therefore presents an opportunity to protect patients from harm—or expose them to avoidable risk.
Africa has made progress, but the unfinished agenda is substantial.
Across Africa, important progress has been made in healthcare quality and patient safety. Countries are developing policies, strategies, regulatory mechanisms and quality-improvement programmes. Ghana, for example, has developed a National Patient Safety Strategy and updated its National Healthcare Quality Strategy for 2024–2030. Kenya has been strengthening its quality and patient-safety legislative framework, while Rwanda and Senegal achieved WHO Maturity Level 3 in medicines regulation in 2024. South Africa has also incorporated safety standards into health-facility assessment mechanisms.
These developments demonstrate growing commitment. Yet a policy, strategy, law, standard or assessment tool does not automatically translate into safer care at the point of service. The major challenge for many African health systems is now implementation, institutionalisation, measurement, accountability and sustained improvement.
WHO estimates that approximately one in ten patients is harmed during healthcare globally, with a substantial proportion of this harm preventable. The burden is particularly significant in low- and middle-income countries, where approximately two-thirds of adverse events and associated years of life lost occur.
For Africa, patient safety must therefore move beyond being a programme of the quality department. It must become a defining characteristic of the health system. AfIHQSA calls for renewed action.
AfIHQSA calls on African health systems and all stakeholders to:
1.Integrate care around the person: Reduce fragmentation and siloed care, particularly for people living with NCDs, by strengthening coordinated, continuous and people-centred services across the continuum of care.
2.Reduce unwarranted variation in care: Implement evidence-based guidelines, protocols, standards, clinical pathways and other proven safety practices, while continuously monitoring and improving their application.
3.Institutionalise quality and patient-safety governance: Establish clear responsibility and accountability for quality and safety at national, regional and facility levels, supported by effective leadership, competent workforce and adequate resources.
4.Strengthen legal and regulatory mechanisms: Countries should establish and implement appropriate patient-safety laws and regulatory mechanisms that protect patients while promoting professional and organisational accountability.
5.Build learning health systems: Healthcare organisations should encourage reporting of incidents and near misses, investigate contributing factors, implement corrective actions and use lessons from harm to prevent recurrence.
6.Put patients and families at the centre of safety: Patients must be partners in identifying risks, making decisions, evaluating services and designing improvements. Their experiences should inform patient-safety priorities.
7.Invest in health workers and measurement: A sustainable safety culture requires a competent, supported workforce and reliable information on safety processes and outcomes. What is measured must lead to action and improvement.
8.Make patient safety a daily commitment: Safety cannot be limited to one day or one programme. It must be reflected in every prescription, procedure, handover, referral, diagnosis and interaction with a patient.
AfIHQSA remains committed to contributing African knowledge, leadership and practical solutions to the global patient-safety movement, including through the “10 Commandments of Patient Safety” (https://isqua.org/ten-10-commandments-of-quality-patient-safety/) proposed by Dr. Elom Otchi as a framework for reflection and action.
Finally, we are reminded of the human dimension of healthcare. Avedis Donabedian emphasised the importance of love in healthcare—love for our patients, our profession and our fellow human beings. Patient safety is ultimately not only about systems, standards and indicators. It is about people caring for people.
On this World Patient Safety Day, AfIHQSA calls for a decisive shift from commitment to implementation, from policy to practice, and from isolated initiatives to institutionalised safety.
Safe care is not an aspiration for tomorrow. It is a responsibility we owe every patient, every day, throughout life.
Dr. Elom OTCHI| PhD, MA (Org. Devt), MPH, MA (Health Law & Ethics), MSC (Quality & Safety in Healthcare Mgt), FISQua
Consultant/Expert
AfIHQSA
17 September 2026
