Certainly even having these discussions is important. That again is why we are here: to provide that lens to raise awareness around patient safety, even with our political leaders across the country. Antimicrobial resistance is a patient safety concern. There are many different types of patient safety incidents, and these conversations around how patient safety is a public health crisis are really important conversations.
Within that same study I cited and that we recently released, we know that if nothing changes over about the next 30 years, 12.1 million Canadians will be harmed by the health care they receive, and 1.2 million of them will die because of health care safety issues. While the human cost of this is certainly significant—and that's just the human toll—it's estimated the financial cost of our poor performance as a country, in both patient safety and acute care and home care, which is where the data was drawn from, over that same 30-year period will be $82 billion.
I would challenge us that as a country, as political leaders, we're not doing enough around patient safety to really draw the attention to the things that aren't going well. There are many different competing demands and priorities within health care. Harm reduction around the opioid crisis is certainly a patient safety concern. We are doing many different activities in support of the joint statement of action, and certainly at local levels as well, and working with the health systems and patients to address some of these issues.
As a precedent as well, antimicrobial resistance is also a medication safety issue. We've been talking about appropriate use of antimicrobials and appropriate antimicrobial stewardship, and our colleagues have certainly spoken to the significant need. Political leaders around the world, through the World Health Organization, as well as health ministers around the world, are starting to talk about how patient safety should be an issue for political leaders. The World Health Organization has also announced a third global patient safety challenge on medication safety, called Medications without Harm. It has a really ambitious aim of reducing severe, avoidable harm related to medication by 50% in five years. Canada can achieve this goal, and our efforts and our support around antimicrobial resistance can go a long way toward Canada's achieving that aim.