The Global Paediatric Surgery Network: A Model of Subspecialty Collaboration Within Global Surgery

Attention to surgical conditions in lowand middle-income countries (LMICs) has increased in recent years. Because half of the population in the world’s poorest countries are children [1], paediatric surgical conditions compose a significant proportion of the global burden of disease (BoD), and there are critical shortages in workforce and skills to treat these diseases in LMICs. Several populationbased studies have highlighted the magnitude of the need for paediatric surgery and the limited capacity, both in human resources and in infrastructure, to tackle the problem [2, 3]. Africa, in particular, has a grave shortage of paediatric surgeons. The number of fully trained paediatric surgeons ranges from 1 in Malawi (population 13 million) to 120 in Egypt (population of 80 million). In more than