The University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Global Surgery  and Emergency Medicine Divisions have recently been designated a World Health Organisation (WHO) collaborating centre.

The centre aims to address the severe healthcare disparities that many populations face. With nearly five billion people worldwide lacking access to necessary surgical procedures, and many low-and middle-income countries unable to obtain timely, affordable, and safe surgical care, this collaboration seeks to improve healthcare systems and save lives.

Health-e News spoke with the lead of the collaborating centre and head of the UCT Global Surgery Division, Professor Salome Maswime about how this collaboration is going to impact the lives of people locally, across the continent and globally.

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Why is it necessary for the WHO to collaborate with the UCT Global Surgery Division?

While we may be looking at healthcare from a local and national sense, it’s important that our goals align with other countries around the world and partnering with the WHO allows for that. The WHO brings together different stakeholders globally that are looking to improve problems in healthcare systems. 

The work that we do as the collaborating centre will not only impact those that are right here within our setting, but it’s able to impact others as well. 

Which underserved areas of care will the centre be prioritising?

The priorities are critical care, surgical care and emergency care, which look at pre-hospital care, hospital transfers for those who need to be transferred to higher levels of care, and improving primary care. 

People that require essential surgery, such as a caesarean section, are not always able to get it when they need it. This delay can lead to tragic outcomes, including preventable deaths, which affect many families in Africa.

In terms of geographical areas, we would want to start with the work that we are doing right here at UCT and build on collaborations that already exist across the continent and in other parts of the world. 

How will the centre improve timely access to care?

We don’t want people to come into our health services and have to wait for long hours and lives getting lost because people weren’t assisted at healthcare facilities when seeking help.

Africa has a high burden of preventable deaths. These are people that would not have died had there been a different healthcare system or a different healthcare facility. 

A centre like this starts to look at the pathways to healthcare, trying to ensure that everyone who is able to enter into a health system is able to get the quality of care that they should receive. 

What other issues does the centre want to address?

Other issues apart from not always being able to provide care that is required timeously, is the quality of care, especially surgical care. 

So even those who end up receiving surgery, have surgical complications and some of these can be prevented by improving the quality of care. 

In the long run we want to improve health outcomes, life expectancy and ultimately ensure that people get the care that they should, beginning from when they enter into the health system. 

Which populations will the centre focus on?

Vulnerable populations are people that are not able to access the level of care that they should be getting because some have been marginalised by society.

In some cases where women are not considered to have the same status as men in society, they might not be able to get care, or they may not be prioritised to receive certain interventions that men would receive. 

In some populations, you’ll find that children are not able to get the care that they need because they are obviously not as prioritised as breadwinners. We’ve even seen disparities between the boy child and the girl child, where both children are born with abnormalities but the boy child is operated on quicker than the girl child.

But we also look at vulnerable populations in terms of diseases. If you look at some of the non-communicable diseases that may affect older populations who may not be able to get themselves to healthcare facilities  as easily as younger people. 

What does this collaboration mean for Africa?

I think what we bring is a unique context, so bringing the African context and looking to be part of the solution. We already work with other experts throughout UCT and other universities in Africa to constantly try to find ways of strengthening and improving healthcare systems.  

A collaboration of this magnitude allows Africans to be key voices and to  come up with solutions to improve healthcare for all and move closer to the dream of attaining universal healthcare for all. – Health-e News