Uganda Launches First-ever Pediatric Surgery National Plan with UK’s Kids Operating Room's Support.

The Ministry of Health in collaboration with Kids Operating Room (KIDS OR) has announced the launch of Uganda's first-ever Children Surgery National Plan, aimed at improving paediatric surgical services and training the paediatric surgical workforce over a five-year period.

 Uganda currently has only eight paediatric surgeons, all of whom work at either Mulago National Referral Hospital or Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital. Most regional referral hospitals lack the necessary workforce and infrastructure to conduct surgery for children effectively.

The Health Permanent Secretary, Dr Diana Atwine, acknowledged these challenges and highlighted the government's focus on expanding access to paediatric surgical services, developing tertiary units, and training more general surgeons and support staff.

The Pediatric Surgical Plan, to be implemented in collaboration with KIDS OR, will involve the development of a children's surgical care system with ten regional centres of excellence and a super-specialist centre at Mulago hospital.

The plan will also aim to train and employ 21 paediatric surgeons and their teams by the end of 2027. The Super Hub-Hubs-Spoke model will ensure sharing of resources, continuous mentorship, and better communication through referral networks with lower healthcare-level facilities.

The model involves equipping a super hub with better resources to provide specialist and super-specialist care, while a hub will have all the required resources to provide general paediatric surgery.

The spoke hospitals, which do not have qualified paediatric surgical teams but provide surgical care for children, will be supported by hub hospitals.

Garreth Wood, Chairperson and Co-Founder of KIDS OR, expressed his gratitude for being part of this first-ever paediatric surgery roadmap in Uganda, adding that the plan would help more children get the right care, at the right time, and in the right place, potentially saving thousands of lives in the years to come.

With the existing population of 21 million children in need of surgical care, KIDS OR contends that Uganda needs 210 paediatric surgeons with their associated anaesthetists and wider teams, based on international standards that recommend one paediatric surgeon per 100,000 children.