The clean care safer care initiative : The goal of Clean Care is Safer Care is to ensure that infection control is acknowledged universally as a solid and essential basis towards patient safety in the region. Such initiative also helps support the reduction of health care-associated infections (HAI) including the importance of hand hygiene and the consequences when providers dont attend to prevention steps [3]. In EMR, the number of registered health care facilities through the “Clean Care Safer Care” website is only 1317 hospital (out of 9000 hospitals in EMRO). By comparison with the other WHO regions, almost every EMRO country has representation but efforts should continue to increase the number of registered health care facilities and improve commitment to promote prevention and control of HAI.

The safe surgery saves lives initiative : The goal of the “Safe Surgery Saves Lives Initiative ” is to improve the safety of perioperative care around the world by ensuring adherence to proven standards of care in all countries. The WHO Surgical Safety Checklist has improved compliance with standards and decreased complications from surgery in eight pilot hospitals where it was evaluated. Only three countries from the EMR out of 26 countries worldwide have mobilized resources to implement the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist on a national scale. Globally 4132 hospitals were registered for the “safe surgery saves lives” challenges; out of them 1790 are actively using the checklist. The number of health-care facilities are using the checklist is around 450 [4].

Patient safety education : The World Health Organization (WHO) developed the Multi-professional Patient Safety Curriculum Guide to accelerate the incorporation of patient safety teaching into higher educational curricula. Many recent studies have highlighted that patient safety education needs to be more explicit and better integrated into health care curricula [5, 6]. Taking advantage of the global trends opening up for educational reforms, and the need to introduce patient safety into health-care professionals’ curricula, the WHO Multi-professional Patient Safety Curriculum Guide uses a health system-focused, team-dependent approach, which impacts health-care professionals and students learning in an integrated way how to operate within a culture of safety [7].

The patient safety-friendly hospital initiative ( PSFHI ): The objective of the PSFHI is to enhance patient safety by developing universal standards to which hospitals adhere to and by encouraging the participation of hospital executives, clinicians and patients to collaborate in such effort. Furthermore, this initiative encourages national health authorities and medical and nursing schools to participate in the process of safe health-care delivery to complement national, regional, and global health-care accreditation programs [8].

Recognizing the need to develop a valid and reliable instrument for the assessment of patient safety adapted to developing countries, WHO EMRO embarked on a process of developing a patient safety assessment manual. The development of the assessment manual was followed by its implementation in representative hospitals in seven countries (namely Egypt, Sudan, Pakistan, Morocco, Jordan, Tunisia, and Yemen) in mid-2009. See Fig. 52.3. This served two purposes—first, to assess the adequacy of the patient safety program; and second, to pilot and further refine the PSFHI before rolling out to other countries [9].

The safe birth checklist : Considering the importance of both maternal and Child health, WHO has developed the Pilot Edition of the Safe Childbirth Checklist, to support the delivery of essential maternal and perinatal care practices [10]. The WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist contains 29 items addressing the major causes of maternal death in low and middle-income countries. It is expected that many health care facilities will be using the Safe Birth Checklist during its pilot implementation in various settings, before the release of the clinical trial that is being conducted in India to assess its impact [11].

National accreditation programs in EMR : Currently, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are the only two countries in EMR that have functioning national accreditation organizations, namely: Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions (CBAHI) in Saudi Arabia, and Health Care Accreditation Council (HCAC) in Jordan. Tunisia has recently established a national accreditation organization but is still working on building the infrastructure (policies and procedures, quality standards, surveyors training, etc.) to become operational.

International accreditation programs in EMR : There are mainly three international accreditation bodies assessing the quality of EMR. These are: (1) Joint Commission International (JCI) , (2) Accreditation Canada International (ACI) , and (3) Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (ACHS) . The JCI is the most widely known international accreditation organization in the region, with the majority of its activities taking place in group 1 EMR countries.