World Patient Safety Day goals 2026: Safe care for noncommunicable diseases

Summary

For World Patient Safety Day 2026, with the theme "Safe care for noncommunicable diseases (NCDs)”, World Health Organization (WHO) is proposing a set of goals to facilitate action for improvement at the point of care. These goals highlight priority areas where health facilities, organizations, health care leaders, managers and health practitioners can make tangible changes to reduce avoidable harm and improve safety for people living with noncommunicable diseases. 

Content

Goal 1 – Partner with people with lived experience and civil society

People with lived experience of NCDs have unique knowledge of how care is delivered and received across the continuum of care. They provide valuable insights into safety risks and opportunities for improvement. When people with lived experience are not enabled to act as partners in care, opportunities to prevent harm may be missed, warning signs or clinical deterioration may not be recognized, treatment-related problems may go unreported and safe self-management may be compromised.

These risks are greatest for underserved and marginalised populations, and for people in situations of vulnerability, who may face additional barriers to participating in their care. Meaningful and inclusive engagement gives people with lived experience and civil society organizations the voice, agency and influence to co-produce safe, responsive and people-centred NCDs services – from individual care to service design, delivery, monitoring, evaluation, improvement and accountability.

Goal 2 - Strengthen prevention and risk assessment

Many NCDs can be prevented or delayed through early identification and management of modifiable risk factors. Risk accumulates across the life course, beginning in childhood, so timely intervention at any stage can reduce lifetime risk and improve long-term health outcomes. Missed opportunities to identify, assess and address modifiable risk factors can expose people to harm by contributing to the preventable onset of NCDs, disease progression, complications and acute events. These missed opportunities may result from inadequate risk assessment and communication, limited health literacy, misinformation and inequitable access to preventive services.

Effective prevention requires a life-course approach that systematically assesses NCD risk, addresses behavioural, metabolic, environmental, social and commercial determinants of health, supports people to make and sustain feasible changes, and is underpinned by strong primary health care, community-based interventions and equitable access to evidence-based preventive services.

Goal 3 - Provide early detection, accurate diagnosis and integrated management

Many NCDs can be detected early and managed more effectively when symptoms, warning signs and clinical deterioration are recognized and acted upon in a timely way. Delays in diagnosis and treatment can result in disease progression, reduced treatment options and poorer health outcomes.

People living with NCDs may experience preventable harm at different stages of diagnosis and management, including: barriers to seeking and accessing care; missed opportunities for early detection; delayed testing and inappropriate use or interpretation of diagnostic tests; missed, delayed or incorrect diagnoses; failure to communicate diagnostic findings; delays in initiating treatment; and inadequate coordination of ongoing care. These risks may be further complicated by multiple co-morbidities and diagnostic uncertainty. Diagnosis and integrated management are collaborative processes involving health care teams, people living with NCDs, their caregivers and supported by health technologies and information systems.

Goal 4 - Secure access and safe use of medicines and medical devices

Many people living with NCDs need long-term treatment, often involving multiple medicines and medical devices in health care settings as well as at home. This increases exposure to medication- and device-related risks. Medication-related harm may result from stockouts and interruptions in treatment, medication errors, polypharmacy, inappropriate prescribing or use, inadequate monitoring and poor communication. Harm associated with medical devices may result from inappropriate selection, unsafe operation, inadequate maintenance, device malfunction or insufficient user training.

Reducing medication- and device-related harm calls for coordinated action by health care providers, pharmacists, biomedical engineers, health care facility managers, regulators, supply chain stakeholders, people living with NCDs and their caregivers. This includes ensuring equitable access to appropriate, quality-assured and affordable medicines and medical devices, together with systems that support their safe prescribing, dispensing, administration and use, and the safe selection, operation, maintenance and monitoring of medical devices. The third WHO Global Patient Safety Challenge, entitled “Medication Without Harm”, calls for action across the medication-use process, with particular attention to polypharmacy, transitions of care and high risk situations.

Goal 5 - Strengthen care coordination, continuity and transitions of care

People living with NCDs often require long-term care over many years, delivered by multiple health workers across different services, organizations and levels of the health system. Each time a person moves between them – on referral, admission, transfer or discharge – important information may be lost and responsibilities for their care may become unclear leading to fragmented care. Such breakdowns can cause preventable harm. Test results and changes to treatment may not reach the next provider, follow-up appointments are missed, tests and procedures are unnecessarily repeated, and medicines are duplicated, omitted or incorrectly changed. People may be left to carry information between providers themselves, which places the burden of continuity on those least able to bear it – particularly people living with multiple conditions and complex care needs.

Safer transitions depend on standardised handover and referral processes, complete and timely information transfer, clear accountability for follow up, and the active involvement of people living with NCDs and their caregivers in their own care. The WHO Framework on integrated, people-centred health services (see Annex 1. Key WHO resources) provides a foundation for strengthening care coordination and continuity across the health system.