We have three main thrusts that we believe is pivotal for global surgical leadership, according to our mission:
Advocacy
To advocate and promote the need for Essential Surgery at all levels.
To date, no other group focuses on translating what we already know about the need for surgical care through valuable research that has been done through the years. We aim to effectively communicate this need through social media and galvanize the global surgical community to speak with one voice.
Collaboration
- To ensure international cooperation and coordination of interested groups and societies with regard to their educational efforts, research, and advocacy for Essential Surgery.
- To provide a neutral ground for a global collaborative effort on the official recognition of Surgery as a significant component of Public Health.
We identify organizations, interest groups, and stakeholders already doing work on the ground and find ways where ICES can enhance their impact. We do NOT believe in reinventing the wheel and duplication of efforts. Instead, we focus on synergies.
Action
- To propose a formal definition of Essential Surgery and encourage adoption and support from the Global Health community.
- To identify surgical procedures that are cost effective and indispensable to a community.
- To create educational and training modules with appropriate certification for these procedures and for effective skills transfer to non-surgeons.
- To work with local surgical societies in training non-surgeons.
- To send a call to established surgical societies to ensure that the surgical care of the underserved is enshrined as one of their own priorities.
Through research, deep experience doing work on the ground and synthesizing available information, ICES is laying the foundation for a systematic effort to tackling the complexity of providing surgical care to the world.
