Need For A Surgical Plan In Ghana

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the global health community has increasingly recognised the need to include surgery, obstetric and anaesthesia care (SOA) in its concept of universal health coverage in any national plan. Surgical conditions (including obstetric conditions) represent a leading contributor to the global burden of disease accounting for a third of all disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) incurred annually. In the study published by the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery (LCoGS), it is stated that about five billion of the world’s 7.5 billion people do not have access to safe and affordable surgical, obstetrics, trauma and anaesthesia care when needed. Among those who are fortunate to have surgery done, 33 million will face catastrophic health expenditure due to payment for surgery and anaesthesia each year. This fact is ever so true for most low-and middle income countries (LMIC) and the Lancet Commission has proposed the use of six core indicators to assess the surgical system of a country. These indicators include specialist surgical workforce per 100,000; number of surgical procedures per 100,000; risk of catastrophic expenditure for surgical care; risk of impoverishing expenditure; postoperative mortality rate and 2-hour access to Bellwether procedures. Of these six indicators, four have been published by the World Bank as World Development Indicators (WDIs).