Professor Stuart Whittaker, MBChB, FFCH (CM), MMed, MD, founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Council for Health Service Accreditation of Southern Africa, is recognized internationally as a leader in the field of healthcare quality improvement. In South Africa, he has been recognized as one of the top 25 influential leaders in the health field and in 2008 received a South African Medical Association Award for Extra-Ordinary Services to Medicine.

He is an Honorary Adjunct Professor in the School of Pathology: Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the Witwatersrand University and the Extraordinary Professor in the School of Health Systems and Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Pretoria.     

In April 2009, Professor Whittaker was appointed as a member of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Health, advising the SA Minister of Health on standards, quality improvement and accreditation and he was also appointed to the Working Group for national standard development.

Dr Whittaker has frequently been appointed as a temporary consultant to the World Health Organisation. Projects in which he has participated have included the impact of accreditation on national health systems, choosing Quality Approaches in Health Systems and being an expert reviewer for Guidelines on Patient Safety – Learning and Reporting systems for adverse events and “near misses”. In 2008 he was appointed as a core member of the Technology for Patient Safety Project by the World Health Organisation’s World Alliance for Patient Safety.