Botswana companies take lead in medical accreditation applications
The Southern African Development Community Accreditation Services’ ( SADCAS) latest annual report has indicated that Botswana is one of the countries with increased interest in accreditation applications, mainly spurred by interest from medical laboratories.
SADCAS is a multi- economy accreditation body established to ensure conformity in assessment service providers operating in the SADC member states that do not have national accreditation bodies.
“During the period under review, SADCAS witnessed marked growth in accreditation applications mainly spurred by interest from medical laboratories from Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana.
“Accreditations from testing laboratories also showed tremendous growth mainly from Tanzania, Botswana and Zimbabwe,” said SADCAS Chief Executive Officer, Eve Christine Gadzikwa on the 15th published annual report for SADCAS. Gadzikwa said SADCAS business continues to grow steadily in numbers and in terms of field and scope of accreditation, and geographical and sector coverage. Currently, SADCAS provides the accreditation services needs to 14 countries, which are: Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo ( DRC), Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. In the last annual report for the year ended 31 March 2023, there were 49 accreditation applications from 12 SADC member states: Angola ( 1), Botswana ( 7), DRC ( 3), Lesotho ( 1), Madagascar ( 2), Malawi ( 5), Mozambique ( 1), Namibia ( 5), Seychelles ( 1), Tanzania ( 21), Zambia ( 1), Zimbabwe ( 1) and Mauritius ( 1) were received.
“These applications were at various stages of processing. Out of the 49 applications under process, seven were at completeness check stage; three at approval of quotation stage; 21 at documentation review stage; 17 at initial assessment stage; and 2 at accreditation approvals committee stage. At the same time, SADCAS was handling 26 expressed interests in accreditation,” said Gadzikwa. This year, Gadzikwa has paid courtesy calls to various stakeholders to introduce the mandate of SADCAS, developments in SADCAS, as well as identifying possible areas of partnership and mutual interest in areas such as capacity building for the SADCAS assessor development programme and digital transformation opportunities. In addition, SADCAS is seeking partnership on business development in new emerging areas such as proficiency testing, forensics and radiation testing.
So far, he has visited key stakeholders including UN Botswana, GIZ Botswana, Ministry of Health Botswana, CDC Botswana and the Japanese Embassy.