Medical students go #GlobalSurgeryDay

Medical students are the future of global surgery.

Chronology, multiplied by epidemiology, to the power of social media – it’s a fierce equation that looks to balance the inequity in surgical and anaesthetic access, safety, participation and voice.

Last month we saw the future in action, as Lifebox teamed up with the Medsin National Global Surgical Working Group to host BeyondBORDERS at the Royal Society of Medicine – the first student-led global surgery conference in the U.K.

Today we’re proud to host our student friends as they announce, in their own words, the next logical step to solving a global problem: a global working group.

Congratulations, InciSioN! And happy #GlobalSurgeryDay…

“If you hear the term ‘Global Health’, you will probably know what it means. But what if you hear about Global Surgery? Unfortunately, surgery has been the “neglected stepchild of global health” for far too long and it’s time for that to change.

Last year, the resolution “Strengthening emergency and essential surgical care and anaesthesia as a component of universal coverage” was finally adopted during the 68th World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva. We now need to implement this resolution in-field in order to guarantee access to safe and affordable surgical care for all, especially since the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery estimates that “an additional 143 million surgical procedures are needed each year to save lives and prevent disability.”

As medical students and the next generation of surgeons and public health leaders, each of us has a unique perspective on surgery. So we, students from different countries around the world, came together to form the working group InciSioN (International Student Surgical Network). For our first step to spread awareness, we needed something affordable and equally accessible from our homes. We decided to use our most powerful tool: social media!

Wednesday, May, 25th is our Global Surgery Day on which we will run a campaign on social media. We hope for you, fellow students and future colleagues, to join us in spreading the word about Global Surgery.

So what can you do to join the movement?

• Twitter: @studentsurgnet. Follow us, retweet our tweets or tweet something yourself using the hashtags #Globalsurgeryday and #SurgerySaves

•Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/incisionstudentnetwork and read/share stories on our Humans of Global Surgery page. You can also share our Facebook posts from your own account and change your Facebook cover to one of our awesome banners.

•Take a selfie with your scrubs on and send it to us on Instagram @studentsurgnet. You can hold a paper with a supportive message for including surgery in public health, while using the hashtags #Globalsurgeryday and #SurgerySaves.”