RACS and 12 other surgical colleges and societies released a joint statement promoting this support. Eleven more colleges subsequently endorsed the statement.
We endorse the vision established through consensus by the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery:
Universal access to safe, affordable surgical and anaesthesia care when needed.
We further agree to propagate the Commission's five key messages:
- Five billion people are unable to access safe surgery when needed
- Scaling up surgical anaesthesia care will need at least 143 million additional procedures annually
- Affordability: current estimates suggest 33 million individuals face catastrophic health expenditure due to payment for surgery and anaesthesia each year and a further 48 million from additional costs from transport, food or loss of earnings.
- Investment in surgical and anaesthesia services is affordable, saves lives, and promotes economic growth
- Surgery is an indivisible, indispensable part of health care and thus must be integrated within the health system and is essential to universal health coverage.
The Colleges undertake to promote research on access to safe, affordable and timely surgery, reporting on the WHO's and the Lancet Commission's recommended surgical indicators. We will progress these within our region and support low and middle income countries with whom we partner and will report progress.
We support the World Health Assembly Resolution 68/31 on the need to strengthen emergency and essential surgical care, and promote the urgency of its implementation to our respective ministries of health.
Read the Lancet Commission Report (26 April 2015).
Supported by:
American College of Surgeons
American Society of Anesthesiologists
Association of Surgeons of India
College of Physicians & Surgeons Pakistan
College of Surgeons of East, Central and Southern Africa
College of Surgeons of Hong Kong
College of Surgeons of Indonesia
College of Surgeons of Malaysia
College of Surgeons of Singapore
Hamad Medical Corporation Qatar
Myanmar Surgical Society
Pacific Island Surgeons Association
Papua New Guinea Surgeons Association
Philippine College of Surgeons
Royal Australasian College of Surgeons
Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Canada
Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh
Royal College of Surgeons of England
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Royal College of Surgeons of Thailand
World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists