With 10 per cent of patients being infected or otherwise harmed during their hospital stay, the United Nations public health agency has launched a programme to set worldwide standards that would reduce the number of preventable new illnesses, injuries and deaths that now cost billions of dollars. The new initiative, would focus on eliminating health-care infections, especially in 2005 and 2006. The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported that at least half of all medical equipment is unsafe and that 77 per cent of the reported cases of counterfeit and substandard drugs have surfaced in developing countries.