Covid-19 vaccination resistance closely linked to WPSD matters

Many people fear for is their own safety, while underestimating the dangers they face if one were to be infected by the coronavirus.

While the WPSD is about solidarity and united action by all countries and international partners, with a view to mitigating harm to patients, exactly the same issue comes up in another way in the jab stalling issue.

The UN-designated Day focuses on preventing and reducing risks, errors and harm to patients during the provision of health care, as these dangers are real and just can’t be ignored.

The Day, like many other such events, is meant to raise awareness and reflection on the matter, with the health sector having been allocated 11 world days scattered across the annual calendar.

These include the World Tuberculosis Day, World Health Day, World Chagas Disease Day, World Malaria Day, World Immunisation Week, and World No Tobacco Day.

Patient safety is especially important because caring for patients is done by humans who have weaknesses like the rest of us.

Thus, the UN says that patient safety is a healthcare discipline that emerged owing to the growing complexity of health care systems.

In other words, technological advances occasioned new problems in caring for patients while also solving numerous such problems, with a disturbing trend of patient harm in healthcare facilities coming up.

The UN cites patient harm due to adverse events as one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide, not just disease.

It is mind-boggling when UN statistics show that evidence suggests that hospitalisation in low- and middle-income countries leads to 134 million adverse events annually, resulting in 2.6 million deaths.

The data are much kinder in high-income countries, where at least one in ten patients is harmed while receiving hospital care by the same statistical flow.

That is partially why high-level officials are often flown to specialised hospitals abroad even when such treatment available locally, as the level of trust differs.

Yet, with the Covid-19 pandemic and the level of resistance to taking the jab, one has a sort of inverse proposition at hand, one of imaginary harm rather than real harm likely emerging from the situation.

Still, what this hesitation amply illustrates is that the whole problem of patient safety in the course of medication is a silent but burning issue worldwide.

It is experienced by individuals and families when it occurs but is very rarely a matter for public debate as it could embarrass the medical profession.

Paradoxically, the idea that health sector professionals ought to be in the firing line on patient safety ignores the fact that medical staff are the first ones to be exposed to danger when patients are taken to hospitals.

The early stages of Covid-19 saw swathes of medical personnel lose their lives before the rules of engaging patients and finding the right equipment like insulation clothing and adequate masking could be fully established – and adhered to. Therefore, the bottom line here is that we are all in this together.