The two, which are the Dansoman and Lapaz branches of Rabito Clinic, received the accreditation after a rigorous assessment by international assessors who used the ISQua-accredicted SafeCare Standards.

Speaking to the Ghanaian Times in Accra yesterday, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Rabito Clinic, Ms Karen Hendrickson, said she was more than delighted with the latest rating and thanked her team members for the feat.

She said, “It is an empowering, energising and extremely exciting achievement by two of our branches. Sometimes I have to even pinch myself because from where we started to where we are now, we’re at level 4, on our way to level 5; with two of our branches”.

Ms Hendrickson said there was the need for all stakeholders to contribute to the quality of healthcare delivery across the country.

She explained that Rabito clinics formed part of the network of hospitals operated by Africa Health Holdings (AHH) and signed up to the SafeCare quality improvement programme last year, stressing that “The AHH is a health service delivery industry leader with outlets in Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria”.

In Ghana, she said the AHH had 20 clinics all operating under the Rabito brand, while Nigeria had two hospitals operating under the CarePoint brand with 38 facilities, comprising hospitals and clinics operating under the Meridian brand in Kenya.

She noted that the Rabito clinics were focused on improving all the quality benchmarks in the facilities to achieve level five accreditation under the SafeCare programme.

Ms Hendrickson said the business had plans of extending its services to rural and deprived communities in the country.

”At this point in time, we have 24 Rabito clinics across the country and we’re in 10 regions. We don’t take that kind of expansion lightly. But we recognise that for Ghana to grow and thrive, quality healthcare has to be as available as fresh air,” she added.

On his part, Dr Frank Appiah-Agyei, a doctor at the facility, highlighted the hospital’s concern for patients and its commitment to ensuring their well-being and recovery.

He said the hospital’s operations had been largely influenced by the quality guidelines prescribed by the SafeCare scheme.

He further indicated that he and his colleagues were determined to observe the SafeCare standards to better the lives of patients and elevate the status of the hospital.

Adelaide Duako Agyapong, an administrator at the Lapaz branch of the Rabito clinics, also expressed happiness at the new status of the hospital.

 “We’ve put in systems, practices, processes and protocols and we prepared towards them. So we should put them into practice so that the quality healthcare that we aspire to give our customers, our clients, will be achieved. So that they’ll not just leave with better conditions, but with a worthwhile experience,” Duako Agyapong added.

The goal of PharmAccess is to make inclusive health markets work in sub-Saharan Africa, realising that the first wealth is health.

Pharm Access challenges the notion that exclusion from essential healthcare is an inevitable consequence of living in poorer countries, and identifies the opportunities partners– both private and public, needed to bring about holistic transformation in failing health markets.