Delivering safer surgery for children

In some countries, the men are operated on first, then the women, then the children. If there are no slots available at the end of the day parents must bring their sick child back the next day and hope the situation is different. 

“All too often, children are at the back of the queue – children do not vote and do not work, so they don’t always get access to the treatment they need,” says Dave Tipping, director of global operations for charity, KidsOR. He explains that there is just one paediatric surgeon per three million children in low-income countries compared to one per 47,000 children in high income countries. In these under-resourced countries, surgeons may have to operate under torchlight, with the ceiling crumbling above, sometimes with broken equipment and only adult-sized instruments. 

There is a lack of paediatric operating theatres, a shortage of trained paediatric surgeons and, all too often, children are denied life-saving and life-changing operations – this means that children who battle cancer and undergo chemotherapy may get to the end of that process only to be denied the surgery that will offer them the chance of survival; children who break an arm or a leg may have to live the rest of their lives with disability; while babies who need simple procedures in the first hours of life may be left to die.