This year’s World Patient Safety Day on 17 September is focused on the theme “Safe care for every newborn and every child”. This article explains the aims of the event and the areas it will cover.
Wednesday 17 September 2025 marks the sixth annual World Patient Safety Day. World Patient Safety Day aims to:
- increase public awareness and engagement
- enhance global understanding
- work towards global solidarity and action by World Health Organization (WHO) Member States to enhance patient safety and reduce patient harm.
The theme of this year’s event is “Safe care for every newborn and every child”.[1]
Ensuring safe care for patients is a fundamental priority, yet newborns and children remain especially vulnerable to patient safety risks. While the reported level of patient safety incidents relating to newborns and children receiving healthcare varies, studies suggest that adverse events occur across all care settings, with higher risks among critically ill children, particularly those in intensive care or requiring complex medical interventions. Some studies report rates as high as 91.6% in intensive care settings and up to 53.8% in general care settings.[2]
To bring attention this critical issue, “Safe care for every newborn and every child” has been selected as the theme for World Patient Safety Day 2025, emphasising the need for stronger measures to protect children from preventable harm. The Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021–2030 recognizes paediatric and newborn safety across multiple strategic objectives, including designing safe clinical processes, strengthening health workforce competencies, engaging patients and families and establishing learning systems to prevent harm.
Objectives of World Patient Safety Day 2025
Under the slogan “Patient safety from the start!”, WHO is calling for urgent action to eliminate avoidable harm in paediatric and newborn care. Addressing this challenge requires comprehensive efforts across key patient safety areas, such as safe childbirth and postnatal care, medication safety, diagnostic safety, immunisation safety, infection prevention and early recognition of clinical deterioration. World Patient Safety Day 2025 aims to drive meaningful improvements and reaffirm every child's right to safe and quality care.
As part of this, it has set four objectives:
- Raise global awareness of safety risks in paediatric and newborn care in all health care settings, emphasising the specific needs of children, families and caregivers.
- Mobilise governments, health care organizations, professional bodies and civil society to implement sustainable strategies for safer care for newborns and children as part of broader patient safety and quality initiatives.
- Empower parents, caregivers and children in patient safety by promoting education, awareness and active participation in care.
- Advocate for Strengthening research on patient safety in paediatric and newborn care.
Share your views and experiences on the hub
Do you have experience or views around the theme of this year’s World Patient Safety Day that you would like to share? You can share your thoughts with us by submitting a blog on the hub, or by emailing us at [email protected].
References
[1] WHO. Announcing World Patient Safety Day 2025 – Patient safety from the start!, 18 March 2025. https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/world-patient-safety-day/announcing-world-patient-safety-day-2025.pdf?sfvrsn=319f753f_1
[2] Dillner P, Eggenschwiler LC, Rutjes AWS, Berg L, Musy SN, Simon M et al. Incidence and characteristics of adverse events in paediatric inpatient care: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ Qual Saf. 2023;32:133–49. https://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/qhc/early/2022/12/26/bmjqs-2022-015298.full.pdf
