Flying is riskier than hospital says World Health Organization

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDJul 21 2011

According to a World Health Organization (WHO) announcement this Tuesday, millions of people die each year from medical errors and infections linked to health care and going into hospital is far riskier than flying.

Liam Donaldson, the WHO's newly appointed envoy for patient safety said, “If you were admitted to hospital tomorrow in any country... your chances of being subjected to an error in your care would be something like 1 in 10. Your chances of dying due to an error in health care would be 1 in 300.” This compared with a risk of dying in an air crash of about 1 in 10 million passengers, according to Donaldson, formerly England's chief medical officer. “It shows that health care generally worldwide still has a long way to go,” he said.

More than 50 percent of acquired infections can be prevented if health care workers clean their hands with soap and water or an alcohol-based hand rub before treating patients. Of every 100 hospitalized patients at any given time, 7 in developed and 10 in developing countries will acquire at least one health care-associated infection, according to the United Nations agency. The report said, “The longer patients stay in an ICU (intensive care unit), the more at risk they become of acquiring an infection.” Medical devices such as urinary catheters and ventilators are associated with high infection rates.

Each year in the United States, 1.7 million infections are acquired in hospital, leading to 100,000 deaths, a far higher rate than in Europe where 4.5 million infections cause 37,000 deaths, according to WHO. Donaldson said, “Health care is a high-risk business, inevitably, because people are sick and modern health care is delivered in a fast-moving, high-pressured environment involving a lot of complex technology and a lot of people.” “Infection is a big problem, injuries after falls in hospitals is a big problem and then there are problems that are on a smaller scale but result in preventable deaths. Medication errors are common,” he added.

“Risk is even higher in developing countries, with about 15 percent of patients acquiring infections”, said Dr. Benedetta Allegranzi of the WHO's “Clean Care is Safer Care” program. “The risk is really higher in high-risk areas of the hospitals, in particular ICUs or neonatal units in developing countries.”

WHO launched its Patient Safety Program in 2004 to raise awareness of simple common-sense measures that can reduce the incidence of hospitals being places where the sick get even sicker. Since then, approximately 13,000 health-care settings globally have reduced infection rates by having health-care providers wash their hands more frequently, program administrators say. More than 100,000 hospitals worldwide, meanwhile, use the program's “Safe Surgery Checklist.” WHO says the list has reduced surgery complications by 33 per cent, and deaths by 50 per cent.