Objectives
The overall aim of SURG-Africa is: to implement surgical systems, that deliver safe, affordable and sustainable essential surgical services to rural populations in LMICs. The specific objectives are:
- Strengthen national surgical systems to scale to national level, deliver – and monitor through a national surgical information system – emergency and common elective surgery in district hospitals in Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia.
- Train surgeon specialists to supervise, mentor and provide surgical systems in-service training – comprising clinical, management and systems skills – to district hospital staff.
- Design and implement studies, including observational, intervention and community studies, costing studies and economic analyses, to compare processes, outcomes, patient experiences, costs and cost-effectiveness of surgery between district and referral hospitals.
- Design and implement participatory implementation research studies to identify and explore enablers and obstacles – at all levels, from community to national level – to accessing and delivering essential safe surgery at district hospitals.
- Disseminate findings to national decision makers and support them in making policy decisions, including assessing budget impacts and appraising options for making safe surgery accessible.
- Disseminate findings to seven countries in East Central and Southern Africa and support them in designing country-specific interventions for making safe surgery accessible.