ArticleAnnals of global health2021
Estimating the Specialist Surgical Workforce Density in South Africa.
Article in Annals of global health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 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
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Mapping Plastic Reconstructive Surgical Needs and Access Barriers in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Scoping Review.World journal of surgery · 2026Article
- The State of Plastic Surgery Training in South Africa.Plastic and reconstructive surgery. Global open · 2026Article
- Exploring Barriers and Facilitators to Incorporating New Practices and Innovations in the Pediatric Perioperative Ecosystem in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Mixed Methods Study.Paediatric anaesthesia · 2026Article
- The profile of the Diploma in Anaesthesia in South Africa.Journal of the colleges of medicine of South Africa · 2026Article
- Mobile endoscopy in rural South Africa: outcomes of a decentralised outreach programme to improve gastrointestinal healthcare access.BMJ open gastroenterology · 2025Article
- Anaesthesiologists' perspectives of the need for nurse anaesthetists in South Africa.Curationis · 2025Article
- Building resilient surgical systems that can withstand external shocks.BMJ global health · 2024Review
- Perioperative capacity and contextual challenges in teaching hospitals of southern Ethiopia: explanatory sequential mixed-methods research.Perioperative medicine (London, England) · 2024Article
- Progress in transforming a health sciences postgraduate cohort in a south african research-intensive institution, 2008-2017.BMC medical education · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: South Africa is an upper middle-income country with inequitable access to healthcare. There is a maldistribution of doctors between the private and public sectors, the latter which serves 86% of the population but has less than half of the human resources. Objective: The objective of this study was to estimate the specialist surgical workforce density in South Africa. Methods: This was a retrospective record-based review of the specialist surgical workforce in South Africa as defined by registration with the Health Professionals Council of South Africa for three cadres: 1) surgeons, and 2) anaesthesiologists, and 3) obstetrician/gynaecologists (OBGYN). Findings: The specialist surgical workforce in South Africa doubled from 2004 (N = 2956) to 2019 (N = 6144). As of December 2019, there were 3096 surgeons (50.4%), 1268 (20.6%) OBGYN, and 1780 (29.0%) anaesthesiologists. The specialist surgical workforce density in 2019 was 10.5 per 100,000 population which ranged from 1.8 in Limpopo and 22.8 per 100,000 in Western Cape province. The proportion of females and those classified other than white increased between 2004-2019. Conclusion: South Africa falls short of the minimum specialist workforce density of 20 per 100,000 to provide adequate essential and emergency surgical care. In order to address the current and future burden of disease treatable by surgical care, South Africa needs a robust surgical healthcare system with adequate human resources, to translate healthcare services into improved health outcomes.
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.