Upcoming Conference of the Society for Quality in Healthcare in Nigeria

PRESS RELEASE

On July 7^th 2009, The Society for Quality in Healthcare in Nigeria will hold its first conference at Muson Centre Agip Hall starting at 9am.  The society which is the brain child of a group of healthcare providers with a vision to see improvement in quality of healthcare in Nigeria was incorporated in May 2006 as a non-governmental organisation.  Members are individuals and organisations who share the same vision and thus provide a strong platform to facilitate sharing of healthcare best practices and experience, as well as being the advocacy vehicle to promote a culture of quality improvement and excellence in healthcare delivery.

There has been a gradual but definite decline in the quality and scope of healthcare services available in Nigeria, in a technological age in which medical science is developing in leaps and bounds. This has resulted in a widening gap between what obtains in the developed and developing worlds. 

According to Dr. Ngozi Onyia, Chairman of the conference planning committee “two particular occurrences bring this sharply into focus for me.  Firstly, anecdotes surrounding Queen Elizabeth’s visits to Nigeria say that during her first visit in the 1950s, she was advised to go without her medical team as the University College Hospital, Ibadan was rated then as the 4^th best hospital in the Commonwealth. However, her next visit some 40 years later, she came in with a comprehensive, well equipped medical team as well as a mini emergency room on a ship.  The second is my personal experience of having to rush my3day old baby to the UK  for life saving surgery, a surgery I had witnessed being performed as medical student 14 years earlier at the UCH, simply because it could no longer be done locally in 1994.”  She further noted that a combination of the decaying infrastructure and the brain drain has literarily brought our health system to its knees.

All well meaning stakeholders in the industry have been concerned about the decline in the healthcare delivery systems in our country and a lot has been done to stem this tide, both in the private and the public sectors. Most of these efforts however have been in silos and there is a need for standardisation and harmonisation of these initiatives to close the existing quality gap in the industry. 

CONFERENCE GOALS

This maiden conference has the following objectives;  

1. Creating awareness about the activities of the society and drive membership.
2. Promoting the principles and practice of quality improvement and risk management in healthcare
3. Introducing the concept of accreditation as a tool for quality improvement in healthcare.
4. Creating awareness around the importance of patient safety and measurement of clinical outcomes  and
5. Exchange of ideas and knowledge on ways of improving healthcare quality.

Speaking at the conference will be a panel of distinguished speakers including Professor S. Whittaker, CEO of COHSASA Africa, Africa’s leading accrediting body; who will give a talk on Maintaining Standards, Role of  Accreditation & Training; and Dr Ashram Ismail MD JCI, Middle East MPH, of the Joint Commission International; who will give a talk on Accreditation as a Means of Improving Clinical Outcomes.

TARGET AUDIENCE

• Health Practitioners
• Policy makers
• Educators
• NGOs
• Civil Society Organisations

All interested individuals and organisations willing to support this effort are invited to join the society. 

For further information contact:

Dr Ngozi Onyia (MB,BS, FWACP, MBA)

Company Medical Adviser Nigerian Breweries Plc

Chairman of the Conference Planning Committee

Tel: 0805 402 2219.