15 May 2014

The representative of World Health Organisation (WHO) to Botswana, Dr Felicitas Zawaira, says the quality and safety of health services should be improved as they are imperative in this era where diseases and ailments are becoming more complex and the public is ever more aware of their rights.

Dr Zawaira made the call at the dissemination of the Botswana National Health Quality Standards recently in Tsabong.

She said the improvement of health services could be done through standardising and defining boundaries for health practices.

She said national health quality standards were authoritative statements that prescribed minimal, acceptable or excellent levels of performance that described expected outcomes in the health care delivery.

Further, she said standards were very essential because they provided nationally consistent level of care that communities should expect from health service providers.

She added that it was vital for all countries to have standards of care and that it was also crucial that such standards ensured quality and safety of health care to customers.

The WHO representative also highlighted that quality standards of care ensured effectiveness, efficiency, accessibility, equity, safety, patient centredness, and acceptance.

She added that Botswana’s national health quality standards would ensure that such important aspects of health were available.

She also stated that standards provided a nationally uniform set of measures of safety and quality for application across a wide variety of health care services; thereby underscoring the concept of universal coverage.

She cited that the services got rendered in the right quantities and amounts that were ideal for the patients with controlled adverse effects.

Dr Zawaira also pointed out that standardisation also played a pivotal role in costs of the health care delivery in the sense that the systems delivered interventions that had been carefully calculated, budgeted for and agreed upon instead of each facility or establishment providing services that may be unnecessarily exorbitant.

She further said that standards provided the communities with a broad base of what they could demand from the health services, adding that standardisation established benchmarks against which health establishments may be assessed, gaps identified and addressed. Dr Zawaira cited that these standards will cater for the young and elderly,the disabled,acute and chronic patients.

The WHO representative explained that it was important that every stakeholder in the health care system had a role to play in the compliance with the national standards.

“Patients and caregivers, community leaderships, dikgosi, MPs and district officers, should be seen to participate actively in making decisions about their own health care.

For this they will need to know and exercise their health care and treatment decisions. Patients and caregivers will need to access information about options and agreed treatment plans”, Dr Zawaira said.

Finally, Dr Zairwa saluted the Assistant minister of Health Dr Gloria Somolekae for having launched the Botswana National Health Quality Standards citing that it was a bold step of disseminating the statements of intent and the scope her ministry would render to the nation. ENDS