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Inclusion of Children’s Surgery in National Surgical Plans and Child Health Programmes: the need and roadmap from Global Initiative for Children’s Surgery

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Abstract

About 1.7 billion children and adolescents, mostly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) lack access to surgical care. While some of these countries have developed surgical plans and others are in the process of developing theirs, children’s surgery has not received the much-needed specific emphasis and focus in these plans. With the significant burden of children’s surgical conditions especially in low- and middle-income countries, universal health coverage and the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) will not be achieved without deliberate efforts to scale up access to children’s surgical care. Inclusion of children’s surgery in National Surgical Obstetric and Anaesthesia Plans (NSOAPs) can be done using the Global Initiative for Children’s Surgery (GICS)-modified Children’s Surgical Assessment Tool (CSAT) tool for baseline assessment and the Optimal Resources for Children Surgical Care (OReCS) as a foundational tool for implementation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Surgery, Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Lagos, Nigeria

    Justina O. Seyi-Olajide

  2. Department of Surgery, University of Washington, Seattle, USA

    Jamie E. Anderson

  3. World Health Organization Emergency and Essential Surgical Care Program, Medicins Sans Frontiers, Geneva, Switzerland

    Neema Kaseje

  4. Department of Surgery, University of California, San Francisco, USA

    Doruk Ozgediz

  5. The Nairobi Hospital, Nairobi, Kenya

    Zipporah Gathuya

  6. Division of Pediatric General and Thoracic Surgery, The Montreal Children’s Hospital, McGill University Health Centre, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Dan Poenaru

  7. Global Initiative for Children’s Surgery, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Walt Johnson

  8. Division of Pediatric Surgery, Rady Children’s Hospital, San Diego, CA, USA

    Stephen W. Bickler

  9. Department of Surgery, University of California, Davis, USA

    Diana L. Farmer

  10. Department of Paediatric Surgery, University of Oxford and Oxford University Hospitals, NHS Trust, Oxford, UK

    Kokila Lakhoo

  11. Department of Surgery, The Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    Keith Oldham

  12. Division of Pediatric Surgery, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    Keith Oldham

  13. Department of Surgery, National Hospital, Abuja, Nigeria

    Emmanuel A. Ameh

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  1. Justina O. Seyi-Olajide
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On behalf of Global Initiative for Children’s Surgery

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Correspondence to Justina O. Seyi-Olajide.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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JOS declares she has no conflict of interest. JEA declares she has no conflict of interest. NK declares she has no conflict of interest. DO declares he has no conflict of interest. ZG declares she has no conflict of interest. DP declares he has no conflict of interest. WJ declares he has no conflict of interest. SWB declares he has no conflict of interest. DLF declares she has no conflict of interest. KL declares she has no conflict of interest. KO declares he has no conflict of interest. EAA declares he has no conflict of interest.

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Seyi-Olajide, J.O., Anderson, J.E., Kaseje, N. et al. Inclusion of Children’s Surgery in National Surgical Plans and Child Health Programmes: the need and roadmap from Global Initiative for Children’s Surgery. Pediatr Surg Int 37, 529–537 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00383-020-04813-x

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