ArticlePLOS global public health2023
Estimating access to surgical care: A community centered national household survey from Pakistan.
Article in PLOS global public health, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Defining the bellwether procedures and processes for global trauma care: an international Delphi study.BMJ global health · 2026Article
- Challenges of Elderly Caregiving in the Indian Subcontinent: A Scoping Review.Public health challenges · 2025Review
- Global Initiative for Children's Surgery (GICS): a decade in review.World journal of pediatric surgery · 2025Review
- Characterizing the unmet need for pediatric neurosurgical care.Surgical neurology international · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Pakistan is a lower middle-income country in South Asia with a population of 225 million. No estimate for surgical care access exists for the country. We postulate the estimated access to surgical care is less than the minimum 80% to be achieved by 2030. We conducted a randomized, stratified two-stage cluster household survey. A sample of 770 households was selected using 2017 census frames from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. Data was collected on choice of hospital and travel time to the chosen hospital for C-section, laparotomy, open fracture repair (OFR), and specialized surgery. Analysis was conducted using Stata 14. Access to all Bellwether surgeries (C-section, laparotomy, and open fracture repair) in Pakistan is estimated to be 74.8%. However, estimated access in rural areas and the provinces of Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Sindh is far less than in urban areas and in Punjab and Islamabad. Estimated access to C-sections is more compared to OFR, laparotomy, and specialized surgery. Health system strengthening efforts should focus on improving surgical care access in rural areas and in Balochistan, KP, and Sindh. More focus is required on standardizing the availability and quality of surgical services in secondary-level hospitals.
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