Welcome to the website for African Partnerships for Patient Safety (APPS) - a WHO Patient Safety initiative. It forms part of the WHO response to the increasing commitment and momentum for action on patient safety across Africa. It is a bidirectional initiative involving hospitals in Africa and Europe ensuring patient safety receives prominence within healthcare.
APPS is launching its second wave of partnerships Geneva, 21 November 2011 - The World Health Organization (WHO) is this week launching the second wave of Europe-to-Africa hospital partnerships to improve patient safety in five countries. WHO, through African Partnerships for Patient Safety (APPS) proposes a unique partnership model translating policy into action to improve patient safety in hospitals in the African region. Hospitals in Africa are teamed up with counterparts in Europe to allow the sharing of tools, processes and learning based on three core objectives: partnership strength; hospital patient safety improvements; and patient safety spread. Building on the success of the "first wave" of partnerships established in 2009, new partnerships between hospitals in Africa and the UK are being launched in this "second wave".
The first wave hospital partnerships The first wave of APPS comprises six partnerships: Uganda-Chester (England), Senegal-University of Geneva Hospitals (Switzerland) , Malawi-Middlesbrough (England), Mali-University of Geneva Hospitals, Ethiopia-Leicester (England), Cameroon-University of Geneva Hospitals.
Implementation First wave implementation is now underway with Hospital partnerships undertaking a series of activities to make care safer for their patients.
First priorities: Health care-associated infections APPS is focusing first on the prevention of infection in hospitals. Through advocating the need to focus on simple measures such as soap and water and alcohol-based handrub in health care which are essential for clean hands, APPS will facilitate the implementation of low cost, high impact interventions.
Events APPS runs a series of workshops for successive waves of APPS Hospital Partnerships. These provide the opportunity for partners to come together to identify needs, select priorities and undertake planning. Events also include APPS advocacy days within partnership hospitals to launch implementation, raise awareness of the project and increase knowledge of patient safety issues.
Our vision - building the programme Working towards ensuring that each of the 46 countries in the WHO African Region has one or more national patient safety beacon hospitals and each has a sustainable partnership with a patient safety beacon hospital in Europe.
