The Nigerian Society of Anaesthetists (NSA) has called for safer medication practices to reduce the risk of errors and deaths while administering drugs.

The NSA made the call while addressing a news conference on Sunday in Abuja to commemorate the 2022 World Anaesthesia Day celebration celebrated on October 16.

The theme for this year’s celebration was ‘Medication Safety’.

The association’s national president, Elizabeth Ogboli-Nwasor, highlighted the role of anaesthesia in global health and called for safer medication to eliminate mistakes or errors that might result in death.

“Unsafe medication practices and medical errors are the leading causes of avoidable harm in health care across the world. It is projected that five per cent of all patients who are admitted to a hospital experience a medication error,” Ms Ogboli-Nwasor stated. 

She added, “An average hospital will have one medication error every 23 hours or one in every 20 admissions. Those errors result in severe patient harm, disability and even death.”

She disclosed that the estimated global cost of medication errors was $42 billion annually.

Ms Ogboli-Nwasor of the Department of Anaesthesia, Ahmadu Bello Teaching Hospital (ABUTH), Zaria, called on the government and drug manufacturers to ensure drugs were visibly labelled and should not be in the same ampoule as others to minimise errors.

According to her, some factors contributing to medication errors include stress, fatigue, poor training for anaesthetics, and a shortage of anaesthetists.

She noted that administering the right drugs with the appropriate dosage to the right patient and at the right time would reduce medication errors.

Saidu Yakub, an anaesthetist consultant at the ABUTH, stressed the need for the government and stakeholders to synergise in curbing fake drugs.

Also, Queeneth Kalu, a consultant anaesthetist at the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, pointed out that the hospital management team in charge of the electricity supply was critical to achieving medication safety. 

(NAN)