Kindly note that even though HIFA SPOTLIGHT on Patient Safety and NCDs emphasize on four different aspects of the Theme, the summary below attempts to integrate them into one single commentary.
Quality care is Informed care. A relational process where Caring is achieved through informed efficient, timely communication, centering on the patient as a person for achieving equity and sustaining safety. Unsafe care is uniformed care, lacking the relational aspect and thereby being deprived of the quality measures that are essential for achieving safety.
The WPSD theme “Safe Care for NCDs – Safe Care for Life!”, marks a milestone in the field of Patient Safety. It enhances the individual concepts of both patient and safety using equity as an overarching principle for guiding the field’s path forward. The equity focus sets a transformative point of view that patient safety should consider not only information on individual medical challenges during treatment, but also relevant lifestyle and environmental risk factors, where health equity is determined by `the conditions in which people are born grow, live, work, play and age’ (WHO, Health equity and its determinants,2021).Within this equity based transformative approach, information on patients emphasizing their agency and safety is acknowledged to be a sustainable social and ethical human right.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO, Invisible numbers, 2022), Globally, NCDs are not only the major cause of premature and preventable deaths, but they also threaten the progress of countries to achieve the health and wellbeing objectives of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The long-term nature of medically treating NCDs requires access to multiple social and economic resources, which challenges safe care of vulnerable patients, particularly from socially disadvantaged communities. However, equity analysis of health and economic benefits indicate that simple and affordable initiatives to address NCDs, including interventions as part of WHO’s “best buys” (WHO,Saving Lives, spending Less, 2025), lead to better population health outcomes than isolated clinical medical efforts for curing the illness (OECD, Health and Economic Benefits of Tackling NCDs, 2026).
In Canada, NCDs are a major public health challenge and require an integrated approach to address root causes of diverse risk factors such as air pollution, diet and nutrition, tobacco and alcohol use,income and physical activity (OECD, Health and Economic Benefits of Tackling NCDs: Canada, 2026).This is supported by the WPSD objective of integrating “patient safety principles across NCD-related legislation, policies, strategies and programmes, with an emphasis on strengthening PHC-oriented health systems
Information related to NCDs need to be communicated within an integrated approach .Recognition of “Safe Care for NCDs” integrated with “Safe Care for Life!” indicate the most pressing issues facing healthcare often relate to (a) addressing the impact of upstream social factors on individual health and (b) acknowledging the interdependence of health systems and other sectors of Ethical, Legal and Social Issues (ELSI). These challenges are seldom addressed within an individual disease-based patient safety approach. Information on intersectional factors of sustainable well-being of NCD patients and integration of their lived experience insights in design, implementation and evaluation of Care approach can respond to persisting inequities within the healthcare and social systems enhancing the value of informed quality care.
Esha Ray Chaudhuri PhD
Patient Advocate / Health Equity Analyst
Calgary,Canada
HIFA profile: Esha Ray Chaudhuri is an Equity Analyst, in Canada. Professional interests: Equity Issues in Health and Health Care with particular focus on interface of Local and Global contexts. She is affiliated to Patients for Patient Safety Canada-Healthcare Excellence Canada, and is a member of the GLL4QUHC at WHO.