ISLAMABAD: The Ministry of National Health Services (NHS) gathered stakeholders on Thursday to discuss how to ensure that surgeries are accessible and affordable by 2025, as required under the National Vision for Surgical Care (NVSC) 2025.

Titled the NVSC 2025 Conference, the event was organised in collaboration with the Indus Health Network (IHN) and inaugurated by NHS Additional Secretary Iqbal Durrani.

The conference was informed that 5 billion people around the world lack access to safe and life-saving surgical care. The majority live in lower middle income countries including Pakistan.

In addition, 16.9 million people die from surgically preventable diseases each year, and approximately 28pc to 32pc of the global disease burden is attributed to surgically treatable conditions.

This includes childbirth complications, cancer related surgeries, surgeries that can improve vision – such as cataracts, heart disease-related surgeries and more. Unsafe surgical care can also cause substantial harm and create further complexities.

Participants were also informed that a number of people suffering from fractures cannot afford surgeries and instead turn to quacks – as a result, their fractures do not heal. Similarly in rural areas people cannot access surgical care, resulting in amputation. They were told that not only do health facilities need to reduce their charges, but surgeons should also reduce their fees so everyone can afford treatment.

Mr Durrani from the NHS also suggested that surgical systems in Pakistan need to be strengthened and a roadmap needs to be created that includes the development of infrastructure, technical expertise and service delivery.

While discussing positive developments in Pakistan’s medical arena, NHS Director General Dr Asad Hafeez said: “To deal with this growing global health problem, member states including Pakistan signed a resolution at the 68th World Health Assembly in 2015 promising to strengthen surgical systems as an integral component of universal health coverage. Through this initiative, Pakistan will be the first Asian country to adapt a locally relevant version of this framework.”

The head of the WHO’s emergency and essential surgical care programme, Dr Walt Johnson, said most people assume surgery is very expensive, “but it’s been shown for a number of years that it’s actually quite cost effective”.

“To bring the 88 lowest-income countries up to the standard-of-care of middle-income countries would cost about US $420bn over 15 years, which seems like a lot, but if you don’t do that, the total cost in disability and lost productivity would be more than US$ 12 trillion over the same time period,” he added.

Professor of surgery at the Harvard Medical School’s Department of Surgery Dr John G. Meara said: “Providing safe, affordable, timely surgery will save millions of lives and trillions of dollars in lost productivity. Agencies should play a critical role in integrating surgical care into health system strengthening and sustainable development if they want to achieve meaningful, long-lasting outcomes.”

Published in Dawn, November 16th, 2018