WHA Resolution on Essential and Emergency Surgical Care
ON 22nd May 2015, delegates at the Sixty Eight World Health Assembly agreed a landmark resolution A68/15 on Strengthening Emergency and Essential Surgical Care and Anaesthesia as a Component of Universal Health Coverage.
This Resolution will help countries adopt and implement policies which will integrate safe, quality and cost effective surgical care into the health system as a whole. It highlights the importance of both expanding access and improving the quality and safety of services; strengthening the surgical workforce; improving data collection, monitoring and evaluation; ensuring access to safe anaesthetics such as Ketamine; and fostering global collaboration and partnerships. The resolution also underscores the need to raise awareness of the issue and build political commitment.
National governments must now work to implement policies/ recommendations set out under the Resolution and will be held accountable by the WHA to make the necessary improvements over the coming year.
Full text of the Resolution is available here
The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery is an ongoing process to realize the vision of universal access to safe, affordable surgical and anesthesia care when needed.
The Commission is chaired by Dr. John G. Meara at Harvard Medical School, Mr. Andy Leather at King’s College London, and Dr. Lars Hagander at Lund University. The commission process is led by a group of 25 commissioners, 31 Bellagio commissioners, and a team of affiliated researchers supported by collaborators from around the world. The vision and work of the commission has been endorsed and is supported by 23 surgical and anesthesia colleges from around the world.
The purpose of The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery is to
- Generate broad sustainable improvements in surgical care around the world and
- Inform and drive policy change. The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery seeks to embed surgery within the global health agenda, catalysing political change, and defining scalable solutions for provision of quality surgical and anesthesia care for all.
Global Surgery 2030: evidence and solutions for achieving health, welfare and economic development
The initial findings from The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery have been published by The Lancet. The main report, along with the first set of accompanying research papers, abstracts and teaching cases are now available:
- Global Surgery 2030: evidence and solutions for achieving health, welfare, and economic development
- The Lancet Global Health: Global Surgery Special Edition
- The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery Abstracts
- The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery Teaching Cases, Volume One
Additional commission publications can be found here.
Disease Control Priorities, 3rd Edition (DCP3)
Disease Control Priorities Network (DCPN), funded in 2009 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is a seven year project managed by University of Washington’s Department of Global Health (UW-DGH) and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). UW-DGH leads and coordinates two key components to promote and support the use of economic evaluation for priority setting at both global and national levels.
UW-DGH coordinates and manages the production of the 3rd Edition of the evidence Disease Control Priorities (DCP3). Building on its predecessors, DCP1 (1993) and DCP2 (2006) published for the World Bank by Oxford University Press, the third edition will provide the most up to date evidence on intervention efficacy and program effectiveness for the leading causes of global disease burden. It will go beyond previous efforts by providing systematic economic evaluation of policy choices affecting the access, update and quality of interventions and delivery platforms for low-and middle-income countries. DCP3 will introduce new extended cost-effectiveness analysis methods for assessing the equity and financial protection considerations of health and macroeconomic policies for extending coverage of proven effective interventions to prevent and treat infectious and chronic diseases, including conditions related to environmental health, trauma and mental disorders.
For more information see: http://dcp-3.org/
G4 Alliance
The Global Alliance for Surgical, Obstetric, Trauma and Anaesthesia Care (G4 Alliance) is an advocacy-based organization dedicated to building political priority for surgical care as part of the global developmene agenda. The Alliance provides a collective voice for Member Organizations united in their commitment to supporting increased access to safe, essential surgical, obstetric, trauma and anaesthesia care for all.
COSECSA is a Member Organisation of the G4 Alliance since December 2014.
For more information see: www.theg4alliance.org