Ecuador’s National Surgical Strengthening Plan: first in Latin America, provides hope for surgical care agenda

Hyman et al.

[Extracto] To the Editor: 

Since 2015, there has been a notable increase in global efforts by various stakeholders to promote and advance surgical care policies, as proposed by the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery (LCoGS) namely, the development of the National Surgical Obstetric Anesthesia Planning (NSOAP), a countrydriven framework that offers a comprehensive approach to health ministries to enhance their surgical systems.1 These plans are strategically designed for integration into national health policies, ensuring the development, implementation, and monitoring of surgical capacity.2 The NSOAP addresses six key health system components: infrastructure, service delivery, information management, workforce, financing, and governance. This momentum has led to the promotion of NSOAPs in over 40 countries, with 11 having fully completed their plans. A significant advancement was the publication of the NSOAP Manual in 2022, followed by a Spanish translation, amidst Ecuador’s version of an NSOAP, the National Surgery Strengthening Plan (NSSP; Plan de Fortalecimiento Quirúrgico Nacional).1 Ecuador´s NSSP exemplifies the framework's strategic and scalable integration into national policies [...]

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