GLOBAL INITIATIVES
Safe Surgery Saves Lives Newsletter – Jan 2010
The Global Initiative for Emergency and Essential Surgical Care (GIEESC)
In 2005 the World Health Organization established this initiative in order to improve access to and quality of surgical care in developing countries. The initiative is a partnership of organizations and individuals from around the world committed to working together to promote and support the development of appropriate surgical services in developing countries. HVO is a partner of this initiative and several of our members serve as advisors and consultants to the Initiative. In addition, these members also represent HVO at annual meetings of the GIEESC. To date, the GIEESC has made several strides in promoting emergency and essential surgical care. An Integrated Management of Emergency and Essential Surgery e-toolkit has been developed, which is being used in a series of “training the trainers” workshops around the world. To learn more about the work of the GIEESC visit the WHO web site.
Safe Surgery Saves Lives Initiative
The World Alliance for Patient Safety, which is part of the World Health Organization, recently launched this initiative aimed to improve the safety of surgical care around the world. This initiative stemmed for the Alliances’ work on the second Global Patient Challenge formulated in January 2007. The first objective of the initiative is to begin to set standards for surgical care throughout the world. As a first step in reaching this objective they have developed a one-page safe surgery checklist for surgery teams to insure that patients receive the correct operation, at the correct site with safe anesthesia, known infection-prevention measures, and using effective teamwork for safe care.
HVO has joined with over 260 other organization in endorsing this initiative. HVO members can also play a significant role, both in the US and abroad, by discussing and incorporating the goals of the campaign 1) raise awareness that improvement in surgical safety is essential to public health; 2) support the safe surgery checklist, and 3) support the establishment of “surgical vital statistics’ asking countries to track surgical volume and in-hospital surgical death rates. To learn more about this initiative, visit the WHO web site.