The RCSI Institute of Global Surgery, the Global Surgery Foundation (GSF) and United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) have partnered to launch an open-access digital learning hub for surgery.

SURGhub provides high-quality, up-to-date, evidence-based and context-relevant materials and aims to enhance the knowledge and skills of the global surgical care workforce.

Freely available to all healthcare providers across the world, its primary focus is to support frontline workers in low-resource settings by empowering them with resources needed to expand surgical and anaesthesia care provision worldwide.

It is the global surgery community’s most ambitious initiative to support the training and education of surgeons, anaesthesia providers, obstetricians and gynaecologists, peri-operative nurses and other surgical team members practicing in underserved communities.

There are currently 27 courses available on SURGhub, provided by 10 partner organisations (CANECSA, COSECSA, ECSACONM, Lifebox, McGill University Health Centre - Centre for Global Surgery, RCSI, ReSurge International, WFSA, CNIS and Smile Train), with more to be added as SURGhub continues to grow.

Professor Juan Carlos Puyana, the O’Brien Chair of Global Surgery at RCSI and Head of the RCSI Institute of Global Surgery, commented: “Surgery is an integral component of a properly functioning health system, yet five billion people worldwide do not have access to safe, affordable, and timely surgical care. The majority of these people live in low and middle-income countries, where the surgical care workforce often struggles to access appropriate training material.

“SURGhub has been developed in response to this problem, by collating and curating existing appropriate high-quality surgical training content. It aims to be a high-quality collaborative space for content providers and those who would benefit the most from the materials they create.”

Access to surgery is a prerequisite for the achievement of UN Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG 3): Good Health and Well-being. As signatories to the UN SDG accord, and ranked first in the world for its contribution to SDG3, RCSI is committed to fostering improvements in communities globally. The RCSI Institute of Global Surgery brings together and builds on RCSI’s 14 years’ experience in the field of global surgery, working to improve underserved populations’ access to high-quality surgical care. Its particular focus is on a system-wide approach to strengthening surgical training, supervision and service delivery – from the district to the central care services.

The SURGhub team welcomes feedback and suggestions to further develop and build the platform. For more information, visit the SURGhub website.