World Patient Safety Day 2025: WHO Calls for Urgent Action on Child Health Safety

On World Patient Safety Day 2025, the World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a stark warning: millions of children worldwide are still exposed to unsafe medical care, leading to preventable deaths, lifelong disabilities, and an erosion of trust in health systems. Under the campaign slogan “Patient safety from the start!”, WHO is urging governments, health professionals, and communities to prioritize paediatric safety as an essential foundation for universal health coverage (UHC).

Why Paediatric Safety Matters

Children are not just small adults. Their rapid physical development, dependence on caregivers, and heightened vulnerability to environmental risks make them particularly susceptible to harm in health-care settings. For newborns, even small lapses in safety can have fatal consequences.

Unsafe care stems from systemic weaknesses: under-resourced facilities, overburdened health workers, poor family engagement, and inadequate safety systems. These gaps increase the risk of avoidable harm, while also undermining public confidence in health systems and worsening inequalities.

WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus emphasized: “Every child deserves a safe start in life. Preventable harm in paediatric care is not only a moral failure, it is a major barrier to achieving health equity and universal health coverage.”

The Global Burden of Unsafe Paediatric Care

Research shows that unsafe paediatric care is widespread and underreported.

• Up to 1 in 2 children admitted to general hospital wards experience harmful incidents.

• In paediatric intensive care units, harm rates can reach 9 in 10 patients, depending on the setting.

• Leading causes include medication errors, diagnostic errors, hospital-acquired infections, surgical complications, and device-related incidents.

• Children with complex medical needs or dependence on medical technology face even greater risks.

The WHO Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021–2030 identifies paediatric safety as a priority area for intervention, noting that unsafe care during early life stages contributes significantly to child mortality, chronic disability, and long-term pressure on fragile health systems.

Preventable Harm: A Strategic Opportunity

While the statistics are alarming, the evidence also shows that over half of patient harm is preventable. Safer care is not only ethically necessary but economically sound:

• Improving quality of care could save up to 1 million newborns every year.

• Engaging families in care decisions can reduce harm by up to 15%.

• Preventing complications lowers costs by cutting down extended hospital stays and unnecessary treatments.

In low-resource settings, even basic investments—such as clean water, sterilized equipment, and trained staff—dramatically reduce risks. In humanitarian crises, where resources are scarce, paediatric safety interventions can be the difference between life and death.

A Call to Action: Making Safety a Global Priority

WHO’s campaign urges governments, health institutions, professionals, and communities to embed paediatric safety in all levels of care:

• Health leaders: Integrate child safety into national health strategies, fund infrastructure upgrades, and expand data monitoring.

• Health workers: Deliver care that is safe, age-appropriate, and child-centred, backed by continuous training.

• Parents and caregivers: Actively participate in care, ask questions, and advocate for children’s needs.

• Educators: Empower children to understand and engage with their own health care as they grow.

• Civil society: Advocate for safe, equitable care, particularly in underserved and conflict-affected regions.

Building Safer Systems for the Future

WHO stresses that paediatric safety is not an optional add-on but a prerequisite for resilient health systems. Without it, efforts to achieve universal health coverage (UHC) will falter.

As Dr Neelam Dhingra, Head of the WHO Patient Safety Flagship, explained: “Children are the future of every nation. Protecting them from unsafe care is both a moral obligation and a practical necessity for building sustainable, resilient health systems.”

The Way Forward

Investing in safer paediatric care is a triple win: it saves lives, reduces health-care costs, and strengthens long-term resilience. By acting now, governments and health systems can transform the silent crisis of unsafe care into a turning point for child health.

On World Patient Safety Day 2025, WHO’s message is clear: Universal health coverage begins with safe care for the youngest among us.