Surgical Care

One method of measuring a country’s health system capacity is to examine patients’ ability to access surgery when they need it. This includes emergency surgeries and operations necessary to treat ongoing or chronic conditions. Access to care is difficult to quantify, as the true number of people who require surgery in a given country is unknown, and the ease with which people are able to access surgical care depends on a variety of factors. However, estimates of the proportion of the population with access to surgical care have been made based on indicators that represent a country’s surgical infrastructure, safety of surgical facilities, geographic proximity of patients to surgical facilities, and affordability of surgical procedures.

In the United Arab Emirates, roughly three quarters of the population is estimated to have access to surgical care. The Center’s region contains countries where over 90% of the population is estimated to have access to surgical care (Israel and South Korea), as well as countries where less than 10% of the population is estimated to have access (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Djibouti, India, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritania, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Yemen).