Dear Portfolio Committee on Health,

I hope that you are keeping well – it is a pleasure to introduce myself.

My name is Andrea Tonelli, I am a medical student from the University of Cape Town currently undertaking a MBChB-PhD degree.

I would like to bring to your attention a personal petition to attain governmental support for the HPCSA to consider applying for and joining the World Federation of Medical Education: https://wfme.org. I have attempted to take up the petition directly with HPCSA leadership for months, but have had no luck.

Recognition from this World Wide authority allows an accrediting agency to:
· to assess their own performance against the WFME criteria and implement improvements as necessary,

· to demonstrate to the organisations that fund or support the agency’s commitment to good practice and external review,

· to learn from the collegial interactions with members of the WFME recognition team’s quality improvement recommendations and the recognition report.

The WFME currently recognises medical accreditation authorities from 54 countries throughout the world, including 4 African countries, specifically Morocco, Nigeria, Tunisia and Egypt. Please see: https://wfme.org/recognition/accrediting-agencies-status/

The registration details can be found here: https://wfme.org/recognition/apply-for-recognition/. Please note that the WFME will consider applications from under-resourced countries that may not be able to afford the registration fees.

The agency may be contacted at: accreditation@wfme.org to initiate the process.

I believe this accreditation would go a long way in advancing the standard of medical education within South Africa, and bring us up to speed with the rest of the world through the promotion of international collaboration. Additionally, this will ensure the South African medical education remains at the internationally accepted and respected level.

The World Health Organization, World Medical Association, and the International Federation of Medical Regulatory Authorities, have all independently and jointly published several policy statements encouraging members to join the WFME. I am unable to attached these policies here but am happy to share them directly via email upon request.

The WFME works at the level of medical education i.e. the certification of the suitability of medical education programmes and the competence of medical schools in the delivery of medical education, rather than at the level of medical accreditation in terms of independent practice and licensing.

Lack of membership to the WFME will ensure a lack of recognition of our undergraduate degrees by international organisations in the future, as there is a trend by global bodies towards using this accreditation as a standard.

One important example is the Education Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates in the USA: as of Jan 2024, only applications from medical accreditation authorities registered with the WFME will be accepted, meaning all South African medical students whole hold undergraduate MBChB degrees will be ineligible to apply for the licensing exams, barring any aspiring students from undertaking super-specialised training programs in the US, that would massively benefit the local health practice and education. Please see the following link: https://www.ecfmg.org/accreditation/.

I would sincerely appreciate any assistance with with forwarding this petition. Thank you for any consideration put towards this request.

Sincerely
Andrea