International Women’s Day 2025: Accelerating action for equity in safer surgery and anesthesia

At Lifebox, we recognize that safer surgery saves lives—and that women are a vital part of this mission. Women play a significant role in surgical teams worldwide, whether as surgeons and anesthesiologists performing life-saving procedures, or nurses providing essential care. This International Women’s Day, we proudly celebrate their invaluable contributions, acknowledging the persistent challenges they face in and beyond the operating rooms. 

Closing the Gaps in Surgical Care for Women 

Women are not only critical members of the surgical workforce but also disproportionately affected as patients. Across the globe, millions of women encounter barriers to accessing essential and safe surgical care due to financial constraints, geographic inaccessibility, and systemic gender biases within healthcare. These disparities often result in overlooked health concerns, delays in life-saving cesarean sections, and conditions such as obstetric fistula, which have life-altering consequences. 

Cesarean delivery is the most common surgical procedure in Africa, accounting for 33.3% of all surgeries (1). It is a critical intervention at all levels of care, yet there are not enough trained specialists to meet the demand—on average, there are just three surgeons, two obstetricians, and one anesthetist per 100,000 people 2. Globally, nearly 1 billion women lack access to emergency obstetric care when they need it. Closing this gap could save over 100,000 mothers and reduce newborn deaths by 30-70% (2). Strengthening the perioperative workforce is key to ensuring safer childbirth for millions.

Lifebox has been working to improve surgical safety especially for women by: 

Strengthening Infection Prevention – Our Clean Cut program helps reduce surgical site infections, a critical issue for women undergoing procedures such as cesarean sections. Clean Cut, Lifebox’s signature quality improvement program, has demonstrated remarkable results, reducing the relative risk of postoperative infections by 46% through reinforcing infection prevention standards and practices. The Clean Cut program has been successfully implemented in 35 hospitals across seven countries, benefiting over 208,000 patients and reducing surgical site infections by 35% (3). When tailored specifically for cesarean sections (Clean-CS), the Lifebox Clean Cut program led to significant improvements in surgical team practices. Hospitals using Clean-CS saw a marked increase in adherence to key safety measures, with staff following at least five out of six standard safety practices more consistently (4).

Expanding Access to Gender-Responsive Safe Surgery – Ensuring that women receive high-quality, timely surgical care requires both hands-on training and systemic change. Through our Safe OR training, we equip surgical teams with the essential skills, knowledge, and tools to improve surgical safety and outcomes for female patients. At the same time, we work closely with partners to advocate for policies that recognize and address the unique surgical needs of women, tackling barriers such as workforce shortages, inadequate resources, and gender disparities in access to care. By combining training with policy advocacy, we are strengthening surgical systems to be more inclusive, equitable, and effective in delivering life-saving care. Lifebox has also designed specialized programs to tackle key challenges in surgical safety, including hypoxia monitoring, surgical visibility, nursing leadership, and antibiotic stewardship. By distributing essential equipment such as pulse oximeters, capnographs, and surgical headlights, Lifebox ensures that frontline healthcare workers have the critical tools needed to enhance the safety of surgery and anesthesia (5).

Women Driving Change at Lifebox

Lifebox’s commitment to gender equity extends beyond the operating room, which is reflected in our team. Women comprise most of our global workforce, leading innovative initiatives to improve surgical safety. From operations managers, program managers and clinical advisors to researchers and trainers, they are at the forefront of our mission, ensuring that every patient—especially women—has access to safer surgical care. Lifebox amplifies women’s voices in global surgery by fostering a women friendly work environment while creating mentorship, leadership, and professional growth opportunities.

Beyond One Day: A Lasting Commitment

International Women’s Day is not just a day of recognition; it’s a call to action. Lifebox ensures that every woman, whether delivering or receiving surgical care, can access safe, high-quality treatment. As we celebrate their achievements, we reiterate our commitment to making gender equity a reality in global surgery every day of the year.

Join us in taking action—safer surgery starts with all of us.

 

Footnotes
  1. Patil P, Nathani P, Bakker JM, van Duinen AJ, Bhushan P, Shukla M, Chalise S, Roy N, Gadgil A. Are LMICs Achieving the Lancet Commission Global Benchmark for Surgical Volumes? A Systematic Review. World J Surg. 2023 Aug;47(8):1930-1939. 
  2. Meara JG, Leather AJM, Hagander L, Alkire BC, Alonso N, Ameh EA, et al. Global Surgery 2030: evidence and solutions for achieving health, welfare, and economic development. The Lancet. August 2015;386(9993):569-624. 
  3. Mammo TN, Feyssa MD, Nofal MR, Gebeyehu N, Shiferaw MA, Tesfaye A, et al. A Perioperative Quality Improvement Program for Cesarean Delivery in Ethiopia: A Stepped-Wedge Cluster Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Netw Open. 20 Aug 2024;7(8):e2428910. 
  4. Forrester JA, Starr N, Negussie T, Schaps D, Adem M, Alemu S, et al. Clean Cut (adaptive, multimodal surgical infection prevention programme) for low‐resource settings: a prospective quality improvement study. Br J Surg. 21 Sept 2020;108(6):727‑34. 
  5. Lifebox – Saving Lives Through Safer Surgery. Available at: https://www.lifebox.org/