Tracking global expenditures on surgery: gaps in knowledge hinder progress

ABSTRACT

Very little is known about how much is spent on surgical care delivery globally. Anecdotal evidence suggests that per-person expenditure on surgery varies enormously across countries. This cross-country and intervention-specific variation makes estimating global and country-level expenditure on surgery challenging; thus, these expenditure figures have not been produced to date. This gap in knowledge about funding to surgery is a major barrier to scale-up of surgical services, because it means that policymakers are unaware of the potential growth in expenditure associated with changes in care.