At the ISQua Executive Board meeting in February 2012, ISQua Accreditation for COHSASA’s Surveyor Training Programme was endorsed and approved for four years, effective from February 2012 to January 2016. The announcement coincided with the first batch of five surveyor trainees who attended a course at COHSASA in Cape Town. They had come from Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and Amsterdam for the training and proudly received their certificates on completing the five-day course. One of the trainees, Ms Liz Rose, became a certified COHSASA surveyor for Primary Care while the others became certified SafeCare Surveyors which means they are now competent to conduct external surveys of clinics in the SafeCare Quality Improvement Programme. Surveyors from other countries said they were extremely pleased to visit COHSASA because they were able to ask questions on site and get direct answers.
COHSASA trained the first group of surveyors in a programme which meets the requirements of the International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua). Pictured at the certificate handover were (from left): Ms Liz Rose, Senior Professional Officer of Quality Assurance for the Health Department at the Cape Town City Council, Professor Tobias Rinke de Wit, on assignment to COHSASA from PharmAccess in the Netherlands as the Director of Research and Business Development, Dr Modupeola “Dupsie” Oludipe who heads up quality for the SafeCare Programme in Nigeria, Dr Nicole Spieker of PharmAccess in the Netherlands who heads up the SafeCare Programme, Dr Giel van Schalkwyk, Chief Surveyor of COHSASA, Professor Stuart Whittaker CEO of COHSASA, Ms Millicent Olulo Orera who is the Quality Coordinator for SafeCare in Kenya, Ms Aletta Kliphuis, Quality Manager at PharmAccess and Dr Peter Risha, the SafeCare Coordinator in Tanzania.