With the fifth yearly Africa Health Exhibition and Congress set to take place next month at the Gallagher Convention Centre, in Midrand, Council for Health Service Accreditation Southern Africa CEO Professor Stuart Whittaker notes that quality standards and an overview of external evaluation methods continue to remain critical areas for both public and private hospitals in Africa.

“Both the public and private sectors in Africa have realised the growing need for improvement of accreditation and quality standards so as to ensure a reduction in the compounding healthcare challenges that the industry faces,” he says.

Looking at public hospitals specifically, Whittaker explains that some of the problems in the public sector include poor planning and leadership for equity, budgets and staffing being inadequate in relation to workload, poor staff support, weak development, as well as a lack of supervision and monitoring. Another major problem is poor provisioning systems, with infrastructure not being fit for purpose and not well maintained.

He adds that equipment in public hospitals is frequently not maintained, replaced, or procured according to formal policies and procedures. Moreover, medicines and other supplies at all levels frequently have poor delivery systems and stock management systems.

“In order to address these issues, as well as somewhat similar but less intense issues faced within some sectors of the private sector, the Quality Conference at Africa Health will spend some time focusing on quality measurement tools and methodologies, the process of sup-porting safety standards, updates of external evaluation programmes in the region and best practices in quality improvement programmes,” Whittaker points out.

Office of Health Standards Compliance (OHSC) chair Professor Lizo Mazwai will give the keynote address at the congress, in which he will highlight how the OHSC impacts on the quality and safety of healthcare establishments in South Africa and the National Health Insurance Plan.

Some of the discussions that will be taking place at the Quality Conference include situations when things go wrong in hospitals and their legal implications, the serious problem of antibiotic resistance and the impact of a national antibiotic stewardship programme.

Also to be covered during the congress are the importance of sedation services in medicine, surgery and dentistry and their impact on patient care and cost, the role of nursing in hospitals from an international perspective, the role of the Hospital Association of South Africa, the development and implementation of national core standards and their impact, as well as an update on internationally accredited accreditation activities in Africa.