Abstract
Editorial: Positioning surgery at the core of the universal health coverage agenda
Highlights
The 68th World Health Assembly adopted resolution WHA 68.15 which called for strengthening emergency and essential surgery and anaesthesia as components of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) (2)
The Kenyan government has adopted UHC as one of the top 4 agenda items for the 2017–2022 governance cycle (5). These developments herald a new opportunity for us all to push for surgery to be at the core of the UHC agenda in our region
UHC means that we provide quality health services— preventive, promotive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative—as needed by our populations while offering them financial protection (10)
Summary
The Alma Ata Declaration was a giant leap for public health, but it was never to be even a small step for surgery. For years, surgery was consigned to the periphery of the global public health agenda (2). Surgery was erroneously deemed ‘too expensive, too sophisticated/specialized and not appropriate for public health initiatives’ (2), even when statistics emerged showing that surgery was responsible for a significant portion of the global burden of disease (3). Farmer and Kim would, years after Alma Ata, aptly describe surgery as the neglected step-child of global public health (4).
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