Universal Health Coverage Day
Saturday 12 December is Universal Health Coverage Day (UHC), a rallying call to action to ensure global access to affordable and quality health care services for all when needed.
Health for all? We say: yes! So do our colleagues in Zambia on the frontline of surgery and anaesthesia practice.
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And so does the World Health Organization, which passed a unanimous resolution this spring at the World Health Assembly in Geneva to strengthen emergency and essential surgical and anaesthesia care as a component of universal health coverage.
Universal health coverage is part of the new United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and over the last five years Lifebox has worked closely with partners and colleagues around the world to advocate for surgery and anaesthesia on the global health agenda, because working across more than 100 countries worldwide we’ve seen again and again: health for all means access to safe surgery and anaesthesia care.
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Zambia is at the fore of this resolution leading the charge for global surgery, and is a one of the pilot sites hosting a National Surgical Summit to discuss and implement findings from the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery, published in April of this year.
So we were thrilled to visit the country recently for the 4th Lifebox and SAFE Obstetric Anaesthesia workshop held in Ndola, where we supported anaesthesia providers from across the country with training and essential monitoring equipment in collaboration with our co-founders the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland (AAGBI). This course was funded by the Ministry of Health and is a great example of the commitment of our Zambian colleagues to safer anaesthetic and surgical practice country-wide.
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We’re proud to stand in support of #HealthForAll and #GlobalSurgery – and hope you’ll follow along for more updates.