Open AccessThe Amsterdam Declaration on Essential Surgical Care
Author(s) -
Botman Matthijs,
Meester Rinse J.,
Voorhoeve Roeland,
Mothes Henning,
Henry Jaymie A.,
Cotton Michael H.,
Lane Robert H. S.,
Jani Pankaj G.,
Heij Hugo A.,
Adan Ismail Edna
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
world journal of surgery
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.115
H-Index - 148
eISSN - 1432-2323
pISSN - 0364-2313
DOI - 10.1007/s00268-015-3057-x
Subject(s) - vascular surgery , abdominal surgery , cardiothoracic surgery , medicine , cardiac surgery , general surgery , declaration , intensive care medicine , surgery , political science , law
On behalf of the supporting organisations and all participants of the international symposium ‘Surgery in Low Resource Settings’, November 2014, in Amsterdam, we present the ‘Amsterdam Declaration on Essential Surgical Care’. The situation with regard to a lack of surgical capacity in LMICs is untenable, and urgent action is required to alleviate the situation. Many thousands of patients are dying unnecessarily every day because there is no one trained to operate on them. As a consequence, the death toll of surgical conditions in low resource settings currently outnumbers the death toll of HIV, malaria and TB combined. Rarely has there been such unanimity in the field of global surgery, and there is urgent action needed. The lack of surgical care will be on the agenda during the World Health Assembly in May 2015. We solicit international health policy makers to support the initiative towards a WHA resolution on ‘Strengthening Emergency and Essential Surgical Care and Anaesthesia as a component of Universal Health Coverage’. We need to make the world realize that we completely forgot something: Surgery should be part of the United Na-