World Patient Safety Day 2026 Theme is Safe Care for NCDs

Union Health Minister J. P. Nadda addressed a World Patient Safety Day 2026 event on 17 September 2026. The venue was the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Medical Sciences and Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in New Delhi. A Quality and Safety Handbook was released there.

The theme this year

The theme for 2026 is Safe care for noncommunicable diseases. The slogan is Safe care for life!. The theme stresses safe, coordinated and continuous care for people living with noncommunicable diseases, written as NCDs.

What the Minister said

The Minister called patient safety a core part of healthcare. He said care must go beyond treatment. Every patient should get safe, dignified and patient-centric care. He warned that speed must not cost precautions or protocols. He stressed correct diagnosis and infection prevention. He also linked cleanliness directly to patient safety, saying a clean hospital is also a safer hospital.

Quality certification

The National Quality Assurance Standards, known as NQAS, were introduced in 2015. About 60,000 government health facilities now carry NQAS certification. The target is to take coverage to around 2 lakh institutions.

Scheme figures quoted

Other points

The Minister described the Swachhata movement as a people's movement and said cleanliness must become part of everyday working practice in hospitals. The Minister said around 11 crore toilets built over the past decade strengthened sanitation. He linked that to a fall in diarrhoeal disease. He also noted that out-of-pocket expenditure has fallen from about 62 per cent of total health spending in 2014 to around 43 per cent. He called for hand hygiene, proper waste disposal and strict infection control in hospitals.