Global MedicineAssessing access to surgical care in Nepal via a cross-sectional, countrywide survey
Section snippets
Methods
This study took place in Nepal from May 25 to June 12, 2014. Both the Nepal Health Research Council in Kathmandu, Nepal, and the Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, provided Institutional Review Board approval.
Results
The overall demographics of the study population have been reported previously.17 Of the 1,342 respondents who reported a surgical complaint in ≥1 of 6 anatomic regions or a pregnancy during their lifetime, information was available for 887 (66.1%) individuals on whether care at a health facility was sought. Within this group, 650 (73.3%) people accessed care through 1,141 health facility visits across their lifetimes, resulting in a median of 2 (interquartile range [IQR] 1, 2) visits per
Discussion
Providing access to essential surgical care in LMICs could avert 1.5 million deaths annually.1 These data have been calculated based on multiple aggregated studies and resources; however, prior to our work, no formal, community-based assessment addressing access to surgical care in Nepal had been published.
We calculated 17.7% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 15.7–19.8%) of the study population had a surgical ailment in their lifetime for which they lacked access to care. Extrapolating to the
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The Association for Academic Surgery 2014 Global Surgery Research Fellowship Award and Surgeons OverSeas provided funding to research fellow Dr Shailvi Gupta to cover research project costs (materials, travel, lodging, etc).
The authors declare no conflicts of interest related to this work.