DILI, 17 october 2022 (TATOLI) – World Health Organization (WHO) and the Ministry of Health (MoH) step up efforts to improve medication safety for the people of Timor-Leste.
WHO Representative to Timor-Leste, Dr. Arvind Mathur said that medicines are meant to heal and are a powerful tool in protecting Health, saying medicines that are wrongly prescribed or wrongly taken or are poor quality can cause serious harm.
“Nobody should be harmed while seeking care but worldwide one in twenty patients attending healthcare facilities is exposed to this avoidable harm and one in four patients face even severe or life-threatening consequences,” Mathur made the comments during a technical seminar at Novo Turismo Hotel, in Dili, today.
He said the collaboration between the WHO and MoH was important to unveil further strategic approaches to ensure good quality and safe healthcare system for the people of Timor-Leste.
“This year the Global Patient Safety Challenge and the campaign aspires to raise global awareness of the high burden of medication-related harm, advocate urgent action to improve medication safety, engage key stakeholders in the efforts to improve medication safety, empower patients and families for safe use of medication and scale up its implementation,” he said.
Mathur said WHO has been promoting medication safety by developing guidance and putting patients at the center of the medication process: “By informing and empowering patients, by improving naming, labeling, and improving the packaging of medicines, helping health care workers to avoid errors and by improving medical systems and practices to reduce the risk of harm.”
He highlighted that patient safety is fundamental to delivering quality essential health services: “Indeed, there is a clear consensus that quality health services across the world should be effective, safe, and people-centered.”
“This august audience is aware that Patient safety focuses on one side on clinicians who are expected to ensure that they safely prescribe, dispense and administer appropriate medicines and monitor the medicine use. However, equally important is the role of others especially patients and their families, facility managers, pharmacists, and most certainly of policymakers and leaders,” he said.
Mathur urged everyone to remember the simple formula for medication safety – Know, Check and Ask!
“Know- the burden of medication-related harm in your hospitals and country or if there are medication safety programs in place: Check- if patient safety focal points are appointed in every health facility, or for SOPs for safe medication use, or patient safety incident reporting and learning system: Ask- if health workers are trained or strategies to reduce the risk of medical errors such as double-checking, patient engagement is in place or not,” he explained.
At the same place, the Health Minister, Odete Maria Freitas Belo raised the importance of building and ensuring a safer health system in Timor-Leste for all.
She said Timor-Leste needed to highlight the importance of reducing medication errors in the country.
“We encourage our health workers, especially doctors to improve communication with our patients. We also need to continually monitor our patients’ conditions for errors,” Belo said.
Journalist: Filomeno Martins
Editor: Nelia Borges
