PATIENT SAFETY NEW BORNS AND CHILDREN
Summary – WHO calls for investment in safe paediatric and newborn care (World Patient Safety Day 2025)
On World Patient Safety Day 2025, the World Health Organization (WHO) is urging urgent global action to ensure safe care for newborns and children under the theme “Patient safety from the start!”. Unsafe care remains a major but often hidden cause of preventable child deaths and disabilities worldwide.
Important Points:
a) Children’s vulnerability: Due to their rapid development and reliance on caregivers, children are especially susceptible to unsafe care, particularly in under resourced health systems.
b) Scale of harm: Studies show that harmful incidents affect up to half of children in hospital wards and as many as nine in ten in intensive care. Common causes include medication errors, diagnostic mistakes, infections, surgical complications, and device related incidents. Children with complex needs face the highest risks.
c) Impact: Unsafe care not only causes deaths and disabilities but also prolongs hospital stays, strains families, weakens public trust, and burdens health systems. In low resource and crisis settings, even small lapses can be devastating.
d) Preventability: Over half of patient harm is preventable. Improved paediatric safety could save newborn lives, reduce harm through family engagement, and cut costs by preventing complications.
e) Call to action: WHO stresses that safe paediatric care is essential for achieving universal health coverage (UHC) and building resilient health systems. It urges:
Governments: make paediatric safety a national priority through investment in training, infrastructure, and data.
Health workers: deliver child centred, safe care.
Parents/caregivers: actively engage in children’s care.
Educators & civil society: empower children and advocate for safety, especially in underserved areas.
Safe, high quality care for children is both a moral imperative and a strategic necessity for global health. Universal health coverage must begin with protecting the youngest patients.
For more detailed insights into how the Patient Safety Act 2023 impacts you and how Whelan Law can support you, please visit our Patient Safety Rights Legal Advice https://www.whelanlaw.ie/news/medical-negligence-and-patient-safety/