VICE President Constantino Chiwenga endorsed the Montroux Charter on patient safety at a high-level health minister's summit in Switzerland in a development expected to strengthen patient safety and eliminate preventable deaths in hospitals.
The charter at the 5th Global Ministerial Summit officially opened by the President of the Swiss Confederation, Alain Berset explored strategies on closing the gap between knowledge and implementation in managing patients' safety.
It recognises that safe and high-quality care is necessary and must be embedded in health care systems hence the realisation that achieving such standards requires the participation of all global stakeholders.
"Minister Dr CGDN Chiwenga is among health ministers from over 80 countries that attended the Global Patient Summit in Switzerland recently. He endorsed the Montroux Charter which seeks to strengthen patient safety and eliminate preventable deaths in hospitals, globally," a Health Ministry communiqué said.
The Health Ministry also revealed that to effectively operationalise the charter, measures such as governance of patient safety, establishment of a directorate responsible for Quality Assurance and Patient Safety have since been put in place.
The authority has also instituted a Quality and Safety Technical Working Group comprising all departments, development partners and client representatives.
All facilities have Quality-Improvement Teams made up of multi-disciplinary health professionals that oversee all aspects of quality improvement iincluding patient safety.
"The Ministry's National Quality Assurance and Patient Safety Policy and Strategy was developed using the World Health Organisation (WHO), National Quality Policy and Strategy steps that are underpinned by various frameworks and Standard Operating Procedures.
"These include guidelines on Safe-Surgery, Infection Prevention and Control and Anti-Microbial Resistance, amongst others," the communiqué added.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) believes that unsafe patient care is among the leading causes of morbidity worldwide amid calls for health experts to correct the anomaly in Zimbabwe.
