Since January 1st, Twitter has been all a-buzz with the hashtag #Its2016AndWeStillDont. Users have jumped aboard this trend to highlight a favorite cause or pressing injustice that we – ostensibly in the ‘royal’ sense – still don’t have. For some, it was universal education or healthcare. For others, it was equal pay for equal work. And for thousands more it was a host of topics worthy of our consideration when we think of what we’re lacking here in 2016.

For those of us in the global surgery community, it was summed up by the following tweet:

g4 tweet

As we enter 2016, this unfortunate reality hangs over the head of every organization, government ministry and health provider looking to deliver surgical care to patients in need across the developing world. Five billion of these patients still don’t have access to safe surgery and anesthesia despite the fact that a growing percentage of the global disease burden – roughly a third – is attributable to surgically treatable conditions. So here we are in 2016 with this critical component of any health system still somehow out of reach for most of the world.

But there’s some hope. Thanks to an extremely active 2015, we’re riding unprecedented momentum into this new year. Between the publication of “Essential Surgery”, the first volume in the third edition of Disease Control Priorities that found that basic surgical procedures could prevent 1.5 million deaths a year; the formation of the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery, which issued a landmark report on the state of surgery; and the advocacy of the G4 Alliance and others, which successfully elevated surgery on the global health agenda, we have a lot to be excited about as we embark on a new year of work.

Here’s a list of the top 5 global surgery developments we at Gradian are looking forward to in 2016:

  1. The Launch of the SDGssdgs

2015 was a milestone year in global health, representing the culmination of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This month marked the official beginning of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which, like the MDGs, place a strong emphasis on improving health (under SDG 3). One critical element of SDG 3 is universal health coverage (UHC), and in 2015 the WHO passed a resolution to include emergency and essential surgical care and anesthesia in UHC. As the SDGs roll out in 2016 and countries begin to devise and implement new UHC strategies, it will be important for the international community to support governments’ efforts to integrate surgery into those plans.

  1. Two Prominent Global Conferences

conferencesThis year features a groundswell of events devoted to global surgery and anesthesia, but two conferences that bookend the year are high on our radar: Women Deliver 2016 and the World Congress of Anesthesiologists. Women Deliver (May 16-19 in Copenhagen) is the world’s largest gathering focused on the health and rights of girls and women, and we look forward to learning how the maternal health field can continue building countries’ capacities to provide surgical care to women facing obstetric emergencies. Likewise, the Anesthesiologists’ Congress (August 28 – September 2 in Hong Kong) hosted by the World Federation of Societies of Anesthesiologists (WFSA) is an important opportunity for those of us focused on anesthesia delivery to come together to spur new ideas for expanding this inextricable component of global surgical care.

  1. Improved Surgical Data Collectioncore indicators

For the first time ever, surgical care indicators have been included on the WHO’s Global Reference List of 100 Core Health Indicators. Now, alongside other key indicators to monitor national and global progress in health are three important metrics related to surgery: perioperative mortality rate, health service access and health worker density. This valuable data – together with other resources like those from the Global Surgical Consortium – will provide a much clearer picture of global surgical needs in 2016, allowing us to better understand country-specific challenges and craft appropriate solutions.

 

  1. #KetamineIsMedicine

This March, the UN Commission ketamineon Narcotic Drugs (CND) will meet to determine whether ketamine should be placed under international control. The WHO recently recommended against this decision, arguing that ketamine remains a crucial anesthetic drug for surgery and pain management in the developing world and should therefore remain accessible. We look forward to supporting WFSA’s impressive #KetamineIsMedicine campaign to encourage the CND to vote against controlling ketamine.

 

 

 

  1. Keeping the Advocacy Pressure Onglobal_surgery-1

We’ve come a long way from surgery as the “neglected stepchild of global public health” to it having its own Lancet commission. In 2016, it will be critical for the Lancet Commission, G4 Alliance and others involved in global surgery to sustain the momentum they’ve helped create. We’re committed to keeping the pressure on in hopes that this time next year, #Its2017AndWeStillDont isn’t quite as far-reaching a reality when it comes to global surgery.

Sign up for our newsletter