Defining humanitarian surgery: international consensus in global surgery

作者：Gerard McKnight, Rocco Friebel, Isobel Marks, Ahmed Almaqadma, Mohamed Youssef Seleem, Tim Fabrice Tientcheu, Raoof Saleh, Marcella Ryan-Coker, Rosemary Emodi, Mai Ahmed Attia Seida, Jonathan Haveloch Barden, Anthony Redmond, Mohana Amirtharajah, Sherry M. Wren, Andrew Leather, Rachel Hargest · 发表于：British journal of surgery · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1093/bjs/znae024 · 被引用次数：7 · 研究领域：Global Health and Surgery、Global Health Workforce Issues、Healthcare Systems and Challenges

Global health has been described as one of the defining issues of our time1. Despite widespread attention on global health since the 1980s, it was not until 2009 that Koplan et al.2 offered a common definition of the term. Agreeing on a definition ensured clarity on the aims, on how to achieve them, and the skills and resources required. More recently, Dare et al.1 offered the following widely used definition of global surgery: ‘an area of study, research, practice, and advocacy that seeks to improve health outcomes and achieve health equity for all people who require surgical care, with a special emphasis on underserved populations and populations in crisis’. This definition includes both underserved populations and populations in crisis, but did not define crises in the context of humanitarian medicine3. Frequently the term ‘humanitarian surgery’ is used to broadly describe surgical work undertaken for underserved populations, for example in charitable or disease-specific surgical missions, as well as disaster responses for populations in crisis4,5. Indeed, there have been over 45 different terms to describe short-term charitable surgical missions6–9. Without a clear definition of humanitarian surgery, it is difficult to interpret published data and analyses6. The lack of clarity and standardization was particularly apparent in the response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake where widespread concerns were raised about the variable capability and the quality of care provided by so...