ArticleWorld journal of surgery2021
Potentially Avertable Child Mortality Associated with Surgical Workforce Scale-up in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Global Study.
Article in World journal of surgery, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 14 citations in OpenAlex.
- Building OHNS Capacity in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Insights From Global Training Programs.Laryngoscope investigative otolaryngology · 2026Article
- Increased Surgical Risks in Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery Following the Shift to Single-Surgeon Practice Triggered by Trainee Resignations.Journal of Korean medical science · 2026Article
- Surgically avertable deaths in a rural Ethiopian community: a verbal autopsy study.BMC surgery · 2026Article
- Care pathways for pediatric surgical conditions.World journal of pediatric surgery · 2026Article
- Prevalence and determinants of child immunization coverage in Ethiopia: Evidence from the 2019 mini-demographic and health survey.Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2025Article
- Surgery and the first 8000 days of life: a review.International health · 2025Review
- Amenable Mortality in Children under 5: An Indicator for Identifying Inequalities in Healthcare Delivery: A Review.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Modeling the global impact of reducing out-of-pocket costs for children's surgical care.PLOS global public health · 2024Article
- Achieving Surgical, Obstetric, Trauma, and Anesthesia (SOTA) care for all in South Asia.Frontiers in public health · 2024Review
- Providing paediatric surgery in low-resource countries.BMJ paediatrics open · 2023Article
- Delivery of essential pediatric congenital surgical care within Brazil's universal health coverage system: a national survey of pediatric surgeons.World journal of pediatric surgery · 2023Article
- Delays in care for hydrocephalus and spina bifida at a tertiary hospital in Somaliland.World journal of pediatric surgery · 2023Article
- Defining Surgical Workforce Density Targets to Meet Child and Neonatal Mortality Rate Targets in the Age of the Sustainable Development Goals: A Global Cross-Sectional Study.World journal of surgery · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
14 authors at 8 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundExpansion of access to surgical care can improve health outcomes, although the impact that scale-up of the surgical workforce will have on child mortality is poorly defined. In this study, we estimate the number of child deaths potentially avertable by increasing the surgical workforce globally to meet targets proposed by the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery.
methodsTo estimate the number of deaths potentially avertable through increases in the surgical workforce, we used log-linear regression to model the association between surgeon, anesthetist and obstetrician workforce (SAO) density and surgically amenable under-5 mortality rate (U5MR), infant mortality rate (IMR), and neonatal mortality rate (NMR) for 192 countries adjusting for potential confounders of childhood mortality, including the non-surgical workforce (physicians, nurses/midwives, community health workers), gross national income per capita, poverty rate, female literacy rate, health expenditure per capita, percentage of urban population, number of surgical operations, and hospital bed density. Surgically amenable mortality was determined using mortality estimates from the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation adjusted by the proportion of deaths in each country due to communicable causes unlikely to be amenable to surgical care. Estimates of mortality reduction due to upscaling surgical care to support the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery (LCoGS) minimum target of 20-40 SAO/100,000 were calculated accounting for potential increases in surgical volume associated with surgical workforce expansion.
resultsIncreasing SAO workforce density was independently associated with lower surgically amenable U5MR as well as NMR (p < 0.01 for each model). When accounting for concomitant increases in surgical volume, scale-up of the surgical workforce to 20-40 SAO/100,000 could potentially prevent between 262,709 (95% CI 229,643-295,434) and 519,629 (465,046-573,919) under 5 deaths annually. The majority (61%) of deaths averted would be neonatal deaths.
conclusionScale up of surgical workforce may substantially decrease childhood mortality rates around the world. Our analysis suggests that scale-up of surgical delivery through increase in the SAO workforce could prevent over 500,000 children from dying before the age of 5 annually. This would represent significant progress toward meeting global child mortality reduction targets.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.