WHO Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021–2030: Towards zero patient harm in health care (first draft August 2020)

Summary

The World Health Assembly (WHA) in May 2019 adopted a resolution ‘Global action on patient safety’ to give priority to patient safety as an essential foundational step in building, designing, operating and evaluating the performance of all health care systems. The adoption of this resolution was a remarkable milestone in global efforts to take concerted action on patient safety and reduce the burden of patient harm due to unsafe healthcare.

The resolution asked the Director General of WHO to formulate a Global Patient Safety Action Plan in consultation with Member States and a wide range of partners and other organisations. 

The Global Patient Safety Action Plan, set out in this document, will provide a strategic direction for concrete actions to be taken by countries, partner organisations, care facilities and WHO to implement WHA resolution. As a result, it will strengthen health systems globally to diagnose, treat, cure, and care whilst striving to: “First do no harm".