An open process to promote surgery as a public health measure
Welcome to the April 2016 newsletter of the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
The end of April marks one year since the launch of Global Surgery 2030, and the momentum has not stopped. This month, we hear about the Global Surgical Frontiers Conference,The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery, one year on, and recent developments in the Zambian National Surgical Planning process. Happy reading!
Global Surgical Frontiers Conference
The 5th Global Surgical Frontiers (GSF) Conference took place on Friday, April 15th 2016 at The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The Conference brought together surgeons, trainees and consultants from the United Kingdom and abroad and provided a platform for sharing global surgery related information and opportunities.
The theme for this year's GSF was The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery, one year on. Co-chairs Dr. Andy Leather and Dr. John Meara gave an overview of the work done by the Commission over the past year. Dr. Meara spoke of the implementation efforts of the Commission, the inclusion of surgical indicators in the World Bank Indicators list, and the ongoing process of adoption of National Surgical Plans in various countries globally. Dr Walt Johnson reiterated WHO Global Initiative for Emergency and Essential Surgical Care’s support of the Commission’s implementation efforts and spoke of the vital role of the Commission’s report in developing a road map towards global implementation of the WHA Resolution 68.15. In addition, responses to the Commission report were showcased and attention was drawn to the impact of the report on existing and future projects.
There was a poster competition on "Capacity Building in Global Surgery." A prize was awarded to Dr. Sristi Sharma et. al. (Karad Consensus statement 2015: towards a national surgical plan for India) for showcasing the Commission’s efforts in India.
Highlights of the conference are available online.
Question and answer session panelists (from left to right): Dr. Emmanuel Makasa, Dr. Justine Davies, Dr. John Meara, and Dr. Andy Leather from the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery.
If you would like to learn more about what the Lancet Commission has done over the past year, please visit our website.
Global Implementation Tools
The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery has been working with multiple partners across the world to move forward the process of surgical and anesthesia systems strengthening. We have developed several tools to aid in the process of national surgical planning or implementation. In large part, these are living documents that will continue to be refined through use and feedback. We invite you to use them and provide us with feedback at lancetglobalsurgery@gmail.com.
- The National Surgical Plan Framework contains the most critical components of a resilient surgical system.
- The Surgical Indicators are a set of 6 indicators covering system preparedness, service delivery, and finance.
- The Hospital Assessment Tool is a 200 point hospital walk-through survey which evaluates the strength of a surgical system within 5 domains: infrastructure, service delivery, workforce, and information management
- The Semi-Structured Interview Tool supplements the hospital assessment tool, and is aimed at gaining additional information from health care providers and administrators.
- The Terms of Reference provides detailed questions to allow for productive discussions between stakeholders when developing and National Surgical Plan.
If you are interested in learning more about your country's surgical system and implementing methods from the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery, please visit our website to access any of these tools.
Lancet Commission on Global Surgery Global Implementation Call
This month, we heard from Dr. Kennedy Lishimpi from the Zambian Ministry of Health regarding recent developments surrounding the national surgical planning process in his country. Committee meetings are underway and a national surgical plan is currently being drafted. Work on this surgery-specific document will continue until the Zambian National Health Strategic Plan is adopted later this year. Callers also discussed lessons learned from the process thus far. Representatives from the team working in Zambia agreed that it is important to achieve ministerial buy-in and think critically about committee selection to ensure broad representation while maintaining a focused message. Members of the project team also agreed that any country interested in taking this type of effort forward should ensure conversation is solution-oriented rather than problem-oriented; doing so drives progress and creates more productive discussions. The next Global Implementation Call will be held on Thursday, May 26th.
Anyone who is a part of or interested in the work of the Commission is welcome to join these calls and encouraged to contact us at lancetglobalsurgery@gmail.com.
If you would like to join our implementation calls, please email lancetglobalsurgery@gmail.com.
Visit our Lancet website, which contains information about the Commission, as well as recent articles and podcasts. We are also still available on globalsurgery.info as well as Twitter and Facebook.