Unsurprisingly, this year’s theme is “Health Worker Safety: a priority for patient safety.”
The pandemic exposed how unsafe health workers could be as exposure and infectivity of that group to the virus was significant as there was no lockdown for us and there were challenges with enough PPEs.
A constant safety issue has been understaffing and overworking of health workers as the ratio in our country remains far from what is required. The brain drain without a compliant brain gain is also contributing to this.
However amidst all the challenges and cases of negligence with are under-elaborated and relatively overemphasized respectively, a lot of good work is being done by healthcare workers in Nigeria. So many successful surgical procedures, medical check ups, disease management and even preventive care. Indeed some sophisticated procedures such as kidney transplants, open heart surgeries and endoscopic (pinhole) surgeries are being done now. The potential remains despite the odds.
Admittedly there is still some way to go in terms of policies, funding and delivery of healthcare services, and hopefully we will make bigger strides.
No one is born a patient and we are all “patients” at one time or the other. The safety of the health care worker is thus very important as is the safety of all 🙏🏽
Join us in creating awareness to our colleagues and patients alike as we speak up for patient safety.
