Implementing patient safety is an horizontal not a vertical process.
Invited by the Health Ministry of Guinea (Conakry), experts in hospital hygiene and infection control from all the French speaking countries of West Africa met on May 6-8, 2008 to establish battle plans to improve patient safety in the region.
But the gathering was unlike other meetings of ‘experts’ for, on this occasion, the people in charge had come to the realization that only the active participation of patients could make the program come through.
The London Declaration was distributed to all participants, and it was proposed that each and every health official had to study and endorse the document and have it endorsed by the Health Minister at home.
In the audience, patients group and media representatives were brought in, and the discussion went back and forth between a very technical approach – how best to organize a national structure to identify and combat nosocomial infections – how to promote hand hygiene- how to conduct research and study of nosocomial infections with key examples from Senegal, Mali, Guinea, - and a very action oriented approach to advocacy, community and patients participation, with media amplifying effect.
If we reflect on historically: developed countries have build a hospital based system, and only later became involved in the struggle against nosocomial infection and ‘brought in’ patients as partners.
What is remarkable about that Africa initiative (soon to be replicated in Congo Brazzaville for Central Africa) is that patients were involved from the start. It’s a leapfrog jump, a bit similar to the use of cell phones throughout countries that have not had land based lines!
The meeting was organized with the support of the West African Health Organization (OOAS), the CEDEAO (West African Economic Community), with funding from the African Development Bank. It had been pulled together by the Guinea Health Ministry – notably Dr Housseynatou Barry -and leaders of the Bordeaux University based RIPAQS (African network for quality and safety in health care) with Dr Frank Mansour Adeoty and Dr Bernard Chanfreau.
Three main action points resulted from the meeting:
1-Draft statutes for Patients’ group were drawn and debated in commission. The AGASEP, Guinean Association for the Advancement of Patient Safety and the Right to Health was initiated, so great was the enthusiasm. It brought together major country NGOs with a membership that included patients who had suffered harm, midwives, health communicators, physicians who had themselves suffered in health care. Participants from the other countries of West Africa went back home with statutes for home use with patients groups.
Dr Aye Bobo Diallo from Fria, Guinea was elected president of the AGASEP.
2-An African NGO of communicators and media people for all of French speaking West Africa was initiated whose purpose was to open the medias to the voice of patients and to amplify all actions for patient safety.
3- On the expert level, a number of task forces were created, the main one being the RACLIN – West Africa Network (African Network of Committees to combat nosocomial infections – Dr Babacar Ndoye, who heads the very efficient Senegal network (with large funding from the EU) was elected president with our great lady organizer of the meeting, Dr Housseynatou Barry as General Secretary.
Among the outcomes of the meeting:
-Dr Sandra Malavaud of the French hospital of Toulouse will lead the group in the Hand Hygiene – as recommended by the World Alliance for Patient Safety and proper set up in infection control on the model of France’s.
-Each Ministry of Health in the region will be fully briefed, and sensitized to the need to involve patients in the much needed effort to clean up health care structures.
