Title : The expansion of surgical care services is essential in improving health equity
Abstract:
Introduction: 5 billion people lack safe, timely and affordable access to surgical care. Global surgical and Anesthesia care is widely considered to be a neglected area of global health. Surgical care expansion is critical for the strengthening of healthcare systems worldwide and the effort to effectively reduce surgical disease associated global burden of disease conditions.
Objectives:The purpose of this narrative review is to identify, evaluate and summarize pertinent literature on global surgery, health equity, surgical disease, and scaling up universal coverage of essential surgery.
Methods: Initial database systems that were researched were PubMed, Embase and WHO Database for systematic reviews. The search terms used were Global Surgery Healthcare Equity and Essential Surgery/Surgical Care, Healthcare Equity and Universal Coverage/LMIC Global Surgery and Essential Surgery/Surgical Telemedicine and Essential Surgery. Studies included had to be focused on surgical care, health equity, global surgery, and surgical innovation.
Results: After examining the abstracts, 311 studies were excluded for various reason, mainly most lacked a focus on global surgical care. 41 articles were considered for review. After reviewing the full articles an additional 23 were excluded due to a lack of relevance pertaining to a broad basis of global surgical care. Search outcome, a total of 17 articles are included in this review. 5 key areas including 13 integral components of scaling up surgical care were identified as efficacious in improving health equity and expansion of surgical care service delivery worldwide.
Conclusions: Scaling-up surgical and anesthesia care is an effective public health tool. Global surgery is essential in addressing, identifying, and improving the expansion of surgical care access and health equity, collaboration and capacity building, data collection, monitoring and evaluation processes, research and training opportunities, economic productivity, enhanced primary and healthcare system efficiency, and the reduction of associated mortality and DALY rates.
