WHO Guidelines for safe surgery: safe surgery saves lives (3 April 2009)

Summary

Confronted with worldwide evidence of substantial public health harm due to inadequate patient safety, the World Health Assembly (WHA) in 2002 adopted a resolution (WHA55.18) urging countries to strengthen the safety of health care and monitoring systems. The resolution also requested that WHO take a lead in setting global norms and standards and supporting country efforts in preparing patient safety policies and practices.

In May 2004, the WHA approved the creation of an international alliance to improve patient safety globally; WHO Patient Safety was launched the following October. For the first time, heads of agencies, policy-makers and patient groups from around the world came together to advance attainment of the goal of “First, do no harm” and to reduce the adverse consequences of unsafe health care.

The purpose of WHO Patient Safety is to facilitate patient safety policy and practice. It is concentrating its actions on focused safety campaigns called Global Patient Safety Challenges, coordinating Patients for Patient Safety, developing a standard taxonomy, designing tools for research policy and assessment, identifying solutions for patient safety, and developing reporting and learning initiatives aimed at producing ‘best practice’ guidelines. Together these efforts could save millions of lives by improving basic health care and halting the diversion of resources from other productive uses.