More than 138 million patients are harmed every year by doctors' errors, the WHO warned, just a few days before celebrating the first World Patient Safety Day, with which it seeks to raise awareness of this ongoing tragedy.
Errors in diagnosis, errors in medicine prescriptions and treatments, and the inappropriate use of drugs are the three main reasons why so many patients harmed, WHO patient-safety coordinator Dr Neelam Dhingra-Kumar said at a Press conference.
“These mistakes occur because healthcare systems are not suitably designed to deal with these errors and learn from them,” Dr Kumar said. Examples of errors are the application of medications in ways they were not designed for, errors in blood transfusions, taking X-rays and in dramatic cases, indicating that the wrong limb needs to be amputated or that the wrong side of the brain requires surgery.