Summary

Universal health coverage (UHC) aims to “ensure that all people can use the promotive, preventive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative health services they need, and that these are of sufficient quality to be effective, while also ensuring that the use of these services does not expose the user to financial hardship”, according to the World Health Organization. There is an urgent need to place quality of care in the fabric of global, regional and country level action plans in order to make progress towards effective UHC. Hospital Accreditation (HA) is one of the mechanisms which encourages continuous quality improvement across levels of healthcare facilities and can address this need.