Nigeria is tightening the safety net around how chronic diseases are treated, with government officials using this year’s World Patient Safety Day to spotlight a growing concern: the risks patients face when managing long-term conditions like diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and chronic lung illness.
At Thursday’s commemoration in Abuja, held under the theme “Safe Care for Noncommunicable Diseases,” Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Professor Muhammad Ali Pate, pointed to a reality many patients already know firsthand, managing a chronic illness means repeated visits, multiple providers, and countless decision points, any of which can go wrong without proper safeguards. From an early diagnosis to years of follow-up care, he said, each stage carries its own safety risks if systems aren’t built to catch mistakes.
For Pate, quality healthcare boils down to a simple principle: patients getting the right treatment, at the right time, delivered the right way with harm kept to a minimum. To move that principle from paper to practice, the Ministry is leaning on its 2024 patient safety policy and a newly formed National Task Force on Clinical Governance, now working on a broader framework to guide hospitals nationwide on accountability, oversight, and error reporting.
One idea Pate pushed hard was normalizing honesty inside hospitals. He wants a system where doctors and nurses can flag mistakes or close calls without fear of punishment, arguing that hiding errors only guarantees they will repeat.
Permanent Secretary Daju Kachollom echoed the urgency, framing patient safety as something that has to be woven into every step of care, not bolted on afterward a difference she says determines whether Nigerians can actually trust the system to protect them.
WHO’s Country Representative, Parvel Ursu, speaking on behalf of the Regional Director for Africa, added the organization’s voice to the call; pressing for stronger primary care, safer use of medicines, and more patients speaking up about their own treatment. The takeaway from Abuja was clear: patient safety cannot just be a once-a-year conversation, it has to become routine.
Source: https://health.gov.ng/
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