Global Webinar | World Patients Alliance

World Patient Safety Day 2026 Global Webinar

Safe Care for Life: A Global Call to Action for Safer NCD Care

Introduction

World Patient Safety Day is an official World Health Organization global public health day observed annually on 17 September. Established by the World Health Assembly in 2019, it aims to raise awareness, strengthen stakeholder engagement, and promote action to reduce avoidable harm in healthcare.

The theme for World Patient Safety Day 2026 is “Safe care for noncommunicable diseases,” with the slogan “Safe care for life!”

People living with noncommunicable diseases often require long term care across multiple professionals, services, facilities, and stages of treatment. This can create safety risks when care is delayed, fragmented, poorly coordinated, or inadequately communicated.

Risks may arise throughout the NCD care continuum, including prevention, screening, diagnosis, treatment, medication management, selfcare, rehabilitation, and palliative care. These may include diagnostic delays or errors, medication related harm, healthcare associated infections, unsafe use of medical devices, communication failures, inadequate follow up, and barriers to timely care.

Meaningful engagement of patients, families, caregivers, and patient organizations is essential to identifying these risks and developing practical solutions. Patients should be recognized not only as recipients of care, but also as partners in designing, delivering, evaluating, and improving safer NCD services.

To mark World Patient Safety Day 2026, the World Patients Alliance will organize a global webinar bringing together patients, patient advocates, health workers, policymakers, health leaders, civil society organizations, and other stakeholders. The webinar will raise awareness of safety challenges in NCD care and promote coordinated, continuous, and patient centred approaches to preventing avoidable harm.

Objectives

The webinar will seek to:

1. Describe the types of patient safety risks experienced by people living with NCDs across the health care continuum, including prevention, diagnosis, treatment, selfcare, rehabilitation, and palliative care.

2. Highlight the experiences and perspectives of patients, families, caregivers, and patient organizations regarding safety concerns in NCD care. Challenges faced by patients may include diagnostic delays, medication related harm, fragmented care, communication gaps, inadequate follow up, and barriers to timely access.

3. Promote meaningful patient engagement in identifying safety risks, designing interventions, evaluating the quality and safety of NCD services, and helping integrate patient safety principles into national and organizational NCD policies, strategies, programmes, and clinical practices.

4. Identify practical actions that health workers, health systems, policy makers, patients, and communities can take to improve safety throughout the NCD care pathway.

Tentative Agenda

Welcome and Introduction

Andrew Spiegel, Chair WPA

Opening Remarks

Helen Haskell, Chair WPA Patient Safety & Quality Council

Keynote Presentation

Patient perspective: Experiences of safety risks across the NCD care pathway

Bill Wang, International Society of Nephrology

Technical presentation: Key patient safety challenges in NCD prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and long term care

Irina Papieva, World Health Organization

Panel Discussion

Moderator

Helen Haskell, Chair WPA Patient Safety & Quality Council

Panelists

Francisco Freyria, Fundación Fomento de Desarrollo Teresa de Jesús, I.A.P (FUTEJE)

Gloria Ekeng, Stroke Care International

Ashok Gupta, Allergy Care India

Emma Doble, BMJ Patient Editor

Questions and Answers

Closing Remarks

Hussain Jafri, CEO, WPA

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Gloria Ekeng

Gloria Ekeng is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and a representative of Stroke Care International United Kingdom and Nigeria. In 2015, Gloria established stroke support group (SSO) in Lagos Nigeria, where she has touched many lives and communities through the awareness and rehabilitation programs of stroke care international. Gloria has also been a Stroke Nurse Consultant with over 12 years of nursing practice in the UK. She is also a board member, an executive committee member and a fellow (FWSO) of World Stroke Organisation (WSO). She has been sharing her expertise on stroke management through conferences, seminars, training courses and publications. She has been a valuable contributor to WHO-WSO Lancet stroke review and more recently WHO-PRI Stroke Group. Gloria is a committee member of the WSO Research Committee and a fellow of World Stroke organisation.

FRANCISCO FREYRÍA

FRANCISCO FREYRÍA is General Director of Fundación Fomento de Desarrollo Teresa de Jesús I.A.P., whose objective is to provide comprehensive support to people of limited resources and without any type of social security, who suffer from gastric or colorectal cancer and to promote a culture of prevention and timely detection, being the only institution in Mexico dedicated to comprehensively support this type of disease. Founding Member of Movimiento Nacional Juntos Contra el Cáncer, which aims to be the largest and most inclusive national movement that brings together all people who, in an organized, ethical and transparent manner, want to improve the cancer environment in Mexico.

Emma Doble

At the age of 4, Emma was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, which she struggled to manage growing up. She set up and developed a number of projects to initiate peer support for young people with type 1, helping others manage and cope with their condition. Her interest in patient partnership began when she started working with her local diabetes team to review, and redesign, the diabetes service while completing her MSc in Health Psychology. Emma Doble joined the BMJ in 2018 and is the patient and public strategy editor, leading on the patient and public partnership work across the BMJ. She has also worked with many other organisations on patient partnership, including Cochrane UK, JDRF, Diabetes Scotland, and the Scottish Government.

Helen Haskell

Helen Haskell is Chair, WPA Patient Safety & Quality Council and also president of the US nonprofit patient organizations Mothers Against Medical Error and Consumers Advancing Patient Safety. She is an Institute for Healthcare Improvement senior fellow and a board member of the Patient Safety Action Network and the International Society for Rapid Response Systems. She is a recently retired board member of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and a previous chair of the WHO Patients for Patient Safety Advisory Group and the Patient Engagement Committee of the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine. She works with the World Health Organization on patient safety and patient engagement and with SIDM, AHRQ and others on diagnostic issues. Helen’s goal since the medical error death of her young son Lewis has been to enhance the patient contribution to safety and quality in healthcare. She has written or co-authored dozens of articles, book chapters, and educational materials on patient engagement in safety, quality, and diagnosis, including a co-edited textbook of case studies from the patient perspective. Her son Lewis’s story has been featured in educational programs and videos including Transparent Health’s full-length Lewis Blackman Story. Helen holds a bachelor’s degree in Classical Studies from Duke University and a master’s degree in Anthropology from Rice University in the United States.