SafeCare Initiative

The SafeCare Initiative

The aim of SafeCare is to ensure Africans and others in resource-restricted countries have access to safe, quality health care. Through the SafeCare Initiative, primary healthcare providers – even those with very few resources – will be able to improve their service delivery and, in so doing, reach international standards of care for patients.

SafeCare was established following a landmark two-day conference on basic healthcare standards in Cape Town on March 9 and 10, 2011.

It is a partnership between COHSASA, PharmAccess Foundation of the Netherlands and the Joint Commission International, the United States-based quality standards authority.

The SafeCare Initiative is a quality improvement and accreditation system that will work with district hospitals and clinics across the continent to offer basic acceptable healthcare standards. Tertiary level hospitals will not form part of the initiative in the short term. It is not a quick fix but an incremental process of improving quality towards excellence.

The healthcare facilities, some of them coming in at very poor baselines, gradually improve their ability to provide safe and quality healthcare and along the way – as a means of encouragement – are awarded certificates that mark their progress towards achieving excellence.

Several facilities in Tanzania and Nigeria are undergoing SafeCare interventions.

The SafeCare Initiative is now poised to be rolled out across Africa. It offers a comprehensive toolkit to make a real difference: a set of standards tried and tested instruments, innovative training methods and financing incentives and monitoring and reporting tools that can be used by assessors to help healthcare facilities provide safe and quality care to patients.

View the SafeCare website at www.safe-care.org