Launch of Lancet Commission on Global Surgery Report
On April 27, 2015, the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery released Global Surgery 2030: evidence and solutions for achieving health, welfare and economic development, the much anticipated report presenting the Commission’s assessment of the current state of global surgery and its recommendations on how to improve surgical care delivery around the world.
Gavin Yamey, MBBS, MPH, MA, MRCP, who leads the Evidence-to-Policy Initiative (E2Pi) of the Global Health Group at UCSF is one of 25 commissioners. The Commission’s Report, alongside the recently released Disease Control Priorities 3, Volume 1: Essential Surgery edited by the Founding Director of UC Global Health Institute and UCSF Professor Haile Debas, MD, provides strong evidence for action and investment in global surgery.
The Commission’s Report (Overview) highlights five key messages:
- Five billion people do not have access to safe, affordable surgical and anesthesia care when needed.
- 143 million additional surgical care procedures are needed in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) each year to save lives and prevent disability.
- 33 million individuals face catastrophic health expenditure due to payment for surgery and anesthesia care each year.
- Investing in surgical services in LMICs is affordable, saves lives, and promotes economic growth.
- Surgery is an “indivisible, indispensable part of health care.”
In the report, the findings of four working groups focused on 1) health care delivery and management, 2) workforce, training, and education, 3) economics and finance, and 4) information management describe the current situation and the way forward for global surgery.
Because of substantial deficits in global surgery research focus, practice, and capacity, the Commission also identified five areas with the greatest need for research as 1) cost and financing, 2) quality and safety, 3) care delivery innovations, 4) burden, and 5) determinants and barriers.
With the understanding that “[s]urgical and anesthesia care must become an integral component of health care and health systems in LMICs to realize our vision of universal access to safe, affordable surgical and anesthesia care,” the Commission urges that “[a]s a new era of global health begins in 2015, the focus should be on the development of broad-based health-systems solutions, and resources should be allocated accordingly.”
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