World Patient Safety Day: Ghana cannot afford unsafe care for people living with NCDs

Photo of author

As noncommunicable diseases become a bigger threat, patient safety must become central to how Ghana delivers chronic care.

A person walks into a hospital with a headache.

Their blood pressure is measured. It is dangerously high.

They are given medication and sent home.
But nobody explains how and when to take it. Nobody checks whether they understand the prescription. Nobody establishes when they should return. Nobody ensures that the next blood-pressure reading is reviewed.

Months later, the same person arrives at the emergency department with a stroke.

Was the stroke inevitable?
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
But this is precisely where patient safety becomes more than a slogan.

Today, September 17, the world marks World Patient Safety Day 2026 under the theme “Safe care for noncommunicable diseases” and the slogan “Safe care for life!” The theme is particularly relevant to Ghana because noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) are no longer a distant public-health threat. They are already deeply embedded in the country's health burden.

When Ghanaians hear the phrase patient safety, many immediately think about medical negligence.

That is understandable.
There have been deeply troubling cases involving alleged failures in healthcare, including cases where families have accused health facilities or professionals of negligence following the death of loved ones.

But patient safety is considerably broader than negligence.

For a person living with an NCD, harm can occur through a missed diagnosis. It can also occur:

• when a laboratory result is not followed up.
• when a medication is prescribed incorrectly or a patient does not receive adequate information about how to use it.
• when a referral is delayed.
• when a patient cannot access essential medicines consistently.
• when a cancer diagnosis comes too late.
• when different providers fail to communicate with each other.
• when a patient does not understand what they have been told about their own condition.

None of these necessarily requires a reckless health worker.

Sometimes the problem is the system.
That distinction matters.
WHO's Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021–2030 calls for health systems to move beyond simply responding to individual errors and to develop systems capable of identifying risks, learning from incidents and preventing avoidable harm.

For Ghana's NCD response, that principle should be non-negotiable.

A person living with chronic disease cannot afford a fragmented health system

NCDs are different from many acute illnesses because they often require continuous care.

A person with hypertension may need medication for decades.

Likewise, a person with diabetes may require regular glucose monitoring, medication, eye examinations, kidney-function assessment and lifestyle counselling.

Similarly, a person living with cancer may move between screening, diagnosis, surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, pathology, pain management and palliative care.

The longer the care journey, the more opportunities there are for the system to fail the patient.

This makes continuity of care itself a patient-safety issue.

Consider hypertension.
WHO's latest Ghana profile estimates that while 52% of adults aged 30–79 with hypertension have been diagnosed, only 38% are receiving treatment and only 21% have controlled blood pressure.

We often describe hypertension as a “silent killer”.

But perhaps we should also ask whether the health system is sufficiently equipped to ensure that people who have already been identified with hypertension remain safely within care.

Finding hypertension is only the beginning.

• The patient needs the correct treatment.
• They need access to medicines.
• They need to understand their treatment.
• They need follow-up.
• Their blood pressure needs to be monitored.
• Treatment may need to be adjusted.
• Complications need to be identified early.
• And when something changes, the patient needs a functioning referral pathway.

A diagnosis without safe continuity of care is not enough.

The same applies to diabetes and cancer

A delay at any point can have consequences.
This is why the WHO's decision to centre World Patient Safety Day 2026 on NCDs is so important for Ghana.

The country cannot simultaneously acknowledge that NCDs are responsible for almost half of deaths and treat the quality and safety of NCD care as a secondary issue.

If Ghana's NCD strategy increasingly emphasizes prevention, screening and primary healthcare, then patient safety cannot be confined to teaching hospitals.

It must begin at the CHPS compound, health centre, and community level.

We must make sure that increased access does not simply mean increased exposure to poorly coordinated care.

The central message, therefore, is that safe care must not begin after something goes wrong.

It must be built into the entire NCD journey: from prevention and screening to diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation and palliative care.

That is what “Safe care for life” should mean in Ghana.