Global surgery - socioeconomic and geographic maldistribution of surgical resources
type: CreativeWork
description: Surgery is an indispensable part of any health system and improving access to safe surgery remains a challenge in the developing world. Surgery is emerging as a priority in global health, unfortunately information around the burden of surgical diseases or the available surgical resources is limited. South Africa is an Upper Middle Income Country (UMIC) and currently provides reasonable surgical services, however these services vary across regions, between urban and rural settings, as well as between public and private hospitals. There is no reliable data regarding the available surgical resources in South Africa, namely surgical beds, operating theatres and surgeons. These variables are essential in developing a National Surgical Plan to address the burden of surgical disease, however they are limited in the information they provide they provide regarding surgical capacity and need to be assessed in context with more robust indicators. This aim of this study was to quantify some of the specific surgical resources as identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Lancet Commission. This research will contribute to the growing body of research regarding global surgery in South Africa and attempt to provide an analysis of metrics used to evaluate surgical systems. The research hypothesis was that the surgical resources in South Africa were limited, and that surgeons, theatres and hospital beds per capita are inadequate compared to developed countries and do not meet global recommendations. This involved a descriptive analysis of surgical resources and included the total number of hospitals, of hospital beds, the number of surgical beds, the number of general surgeons (specialist and non-specialist), and the number of functional operating theatres in South Africa. The surgical resources were analysed, both according to province and district, and a comparison was performed based on the population density. A comparison of the public and private facilities was u…
abstract: Surgery is an indispensable part of any health system and improving access to safe surgery remains a challenge in the developing world. Surgery is emerging as a priority in global health, unfortunately information around the burden of surgical diseases or the available surgical resources is limited. South Africa is an Upper Middle Income Country (UMIC) and currently provides reasonable surgical services, however these services vary across regions, between urban and rural settings, as well as between public and private hospitals. There is no reliable data regarding the available surgical resources in South Africa, namely surgical beds, operating theatres and surgeons. These variables are essential in developing a National Surgical Plan to address the burden of surgical disease, however they are limited in the information they provide they provide regarding surgical capacity and need to be assessed in context with more robust indicators. This aim of this study was to quantify some of the specific surgical resources as identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Lancet Commission. This research will contribute to the growing body of research regarding global surgery in South Africa and attempt to provide an analysis of metrics used to evaluate surgical systems. The research hypothesis was that the surgical resources in South Africa were limited, and that surgeons, theatres and hospital beds per capita are inadequate compared to developed countries and do not meet global recommendations. This involved a descriptive analysis of surgical resources and included the total number of hospitals, of hospital beds, the number of surgical beds, the number of general surgeons (specialist and non-specialist), and the number of functional operating theatres in South Africa. The surgical resources were analysed, both according to province and district, and a comparison was performed based on the population density. A comparison of the public and private facilities was u…
author: Dell, Angela June
language: eng
date published: 2016
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:23:36Z
provider: University of Cape Town
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Department of Surgery

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/22796