Abstract
The International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations (IFMSA), the world’s oldest and largest independent medical students’ organisation, representing associations of medical students from 108 national member organisations and 1100 medical schools from more than 100 countries, was created over 60 years ago to build a network for medical students. In a rapidly globalising world, medical students are increasingly involved and interested in playing a role in global health. Indeed, all the IFMSA initiatives are based on a vision which ‘embraces cultural diversity so as to shape a sustainable and healthy future’.
Projects, conferences and workshops are organised to expose students to humanitarian and health issues, providing them with the opportunity to campaign for social change.
IFMSA has no geographical, social, cultural, religious, racial or political boundaries. Thus this group of future doctors are becoming more and more culturally aware and open-minded physicians. They are aware of the growing disparities and health inequities in the countries with which they interchange. They believe in cooperation and collaboration and one of their platforms urges medical students to become aware and act on the issue of inequitable access to surgical care worldwide.3 Their first workshop on global surgery has been held in Taipei, Taiwan this August.
On May 26th, the World Health Organization (WHO) Executive Board (EB) unanimously passed the agenda item, ‘Strengthening Emergency and Essential Surgical Care and Anaesthesia as a Component of Universal Health Coverage’ for a resolution at the 68th World Health Assembly (WHA) in May 2015. Over 30 Member States and six NGOs, the Assistant Director General and the Director General all voiced their support of the EB agenda item. The Minister of Health from Rwanda rightly commented, ‘we should have acted before’, and, ‘surgery and anaesthesia have not received the deserved attention in the past and Africa should wake up’. Previous WHAs have approved resolutions incorporating some aspects of surgical care, such as maternal and child health, road traffic injuries and female genital mutilation. This is the first time a resolution specifically about access to surgery and anaesthesia has been put forward.
Global access to surgery is important as the problems requiring surgical care are rapidly outstripping infectious diseases, which have been the main concern of WHO since its inception.
The realisation that surgery is not necessarily complicated, and is manifestly cost-effective must dawn on the policy makers in the world. The IFMSA demonstrate a keenness that this hope will turn into reality in the next 10 years.
Contributions from:
I Di Salvo1, J Bentaleb2, H Holmer3, R Ologunde4, P Nyembo5, Ladi Seyedian S6, G Sama Philipo7 and WC Wanjai8
1University of Pavia, Italy
2University of Montreal, Canada
3Lund University, Sweden
4Imperial College London, UK
5University of Rwanda-School of Medicine, Rwanda
6Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran
7Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, Uganda
8University of Nairobi, Nairobi