Inculcate Strong Culture Of Safety

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 6 (Bernama) -- Medical professionals need to inculcate a strong culture of safety if improvement in health quality is to be achieved, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said Sunday.
The Deputy Prime Minister said there must be proper change in culture, perspective and attitude towards errors, failures and their causes.
"One of the key approaches to ensure quality is to enlarge the "quality envelope". This is to move towards a culture of safety," he said in his speech at the opening of the 18th Figo World Congress of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, here Sunday.
He said it was true that life permitted no absolute safety, however, as medical professionals, it was their responsibility to ensure that no harm befell on patients.
Najib said that quality in health care, in particular maternal health, was a global issue and it was no longer being judged solely at the city level but also internationally.
He said Malaysia had made impressive gains in the standard of living and many of these gains had accrued to women.
Najib said there had been steady improvement in the health status of Malaysian women as indicated by the rising life expectancy at birth and declining maternal mortality and fertility rate.
"The average life expectancy of women increased from 58.2 years in 1957 to 75 years in 2000, an increase of 29 per cent," he said.
He said the maternal mortality rate had decreased more than tenfold to 0.2 per 1,000 live births after 43 years of independence.
Najib said from a high of 2.8 per 1,000 live births between 1956 and 1960, the maternal mortality rate declined by 25 per cent to only 2.1 per 1,000 live births five years later and then to 1.6 one decade after independence.
"Between 1957 and the early 1980's the decline averaged 27.8 per cent every five years and the mortality rate maintained its rapid fall through the 1980's and 1990's," he said.
On the six-day congress, he said one of the main areas of interest was maternal mortality because in some countries the rates of women dying during the reproductive process were extremely high.
More than 8,000 participants from 130 nations are attending the congress which starts today with some 700 papers to be presented.
At the same event, the wife of former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali, one of the first Malay woman doctors in the country, received the Figo Recognition Award for her contribution on women health in the country.