Operation Smile and World Children’s Initiative Work Together to Implement Programs to Enhance Access to Safe, Affordable Surgical Care

World Children’s Initiative (WCI) is one of the partners working with Operation Smile to advance Operation Smile’s Global Essential Surgery (GES) project currently taking place in Madagascar and two other countries. Operation Smile’s experience in safe surgical delivery for cleft care offers the opportunity to conceptualize, pilot, document and measure the impact and potential replicability of innovative approaches to improving surgical systems at the district level.

In 2015, the Lancet Commissions’ Global Surgery 2030 Report found that 5 billion people do not have access to safe, affordable surgical and anesthesia care when needed. Access is worst in low-income and lower-middle-income countries, where nine of ten people cannot access basic surgical care.

Working to address these inequities, as part of the GES project, WCI and the Malagasy Ministry of Health are working with Operation Smile to jointly develop a safe surgery program in Madagascar’s the Centre Hospitalier De Reference Regionale (CHRR). The projected five-year project will bring together hospital leadership, community medical personnel, local and national governments to build the infrastructure and clinical expertise to serve the Malagasy population of over 21 million people.

Operation Smile and WCI bring their respective organizations’ strengths to the partnership. Since 1982, Operation Smile has been providing safe, effective and timely surgery with the highest quality of care to people where it’s needed most. By providing local medical professionals with training, education, supplies and equipment, Operation Smile helps strengthen the health care systems where it works. World Children’s Initiative core mission is to promote sustainable medical development by “training to independence.” WCI’s recently completed Project Heart: Uganda, for example, established a pediatric cardiac catheterization program at the Uganda Heart Institute, which now boasts local doctors treating and curing children’s heart disease in ways they could not just a few years ago.

Committed to working together in Madagascar, Operation Smile and WCI want to help improve access and advance safe surgery for thousands of Malagasy people. With the support of the Malagasy Ministry of Health, the three organizations can help close the gap in health care equity and envision a future where health and dignity are improved through safe surgery.