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What is the UN Global Surgery Learning Hub?

Development of the existing and future surgical care workforce is a key component –perhaps the key component– in the provision of safe surgical care worldwide. There is currently no effective bridge between learners’ needs and appropriate education and training content.

The United Nations Global Surgery Learning Hub provides appropriate in-service and pre-service education and training opportunities to all cadres involved in the delivery of surgical care as well as relevant stakeholders in research, policy, academia, and industry.

The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR)

UNITAR is the principal training arm of the United Nations system, providing training and capacity development activities to assist mainly developing countries. It has become a leading institute in the provision of customized and creative learning solutions to institutions and individuals from both public and private sectors.

The Global Surgery Foundation (GSF)

The GSF exists to accelerate and expand the provision of surgical care for attaining better health for all. The GSF is a foundation under Swiss law and serves as a common platform for all global surgery stakeholders.

The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI)

RCSI Institute of Global Surgery was established to address the global surgery crisis, bringing together and building on RCSI’s track record of research, training and educational partnerships in low-resource contexts. The Institute works in long-term collaborative partnerships to create patient-centred, outcomes-based, global surgery research and education.

The Project Team

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General Surgeon

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Nurse Anaesthetist

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General Surgeon

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Urological Surgeon

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Paediatric Surgeon

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General Surgeon

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Orthopaedic Surgeon

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Gynaecologist

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Anaesthetist

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Orthopaedic Surgeon

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E-learning Expert

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Educationalist

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Educationalist

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Information Specialist

Tech & Intellectual Property Lawyer

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Pediatric Neurosurgery & Critial Care Nurse Practitioner

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Instructional Designer

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General Surgeon

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Management Engineer

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Surgical Trainee and Resident Physician

Aaron Berger - Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery
Abdelrahman Elsayid - Anaesthesia
Allyson Alfonso - Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery
Amol Kulkarni - Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery
Basma Tamasas - Orthodontist
Berthe Barhayiga - Anaesthesia
Bisola Onajin-Obembe - Anaesthesia
Busola Alagbe-Briggs – Anaesthesia
Carmelo Loinaz - General Surgery
Carmen Gerber – Anaesthesia
Chad Perlyn - Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery
Chihena Banda - Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery
Chris Dodgion - Critical Care / Trauma and Acute Care
Daniel Josef Lindegger - Ophthalmology
David Tang - General Dentist
Dheera Ananthakrishnan - Orthopaedic Spine Surgery
Dhruva Nath Ghosh - Paediatric Urologist
Drew Huang - Plastic & Reconstructive surgery
Dolorence Wakida - Perioperative Nursing
Emily C. Sturm - Surgical Oncology
Fady Balaa - General & Hepatobiliary surgery
Fiona Linton - Anaesthetic Registrar
Fridah Bosire - General Surgery
George Duke Mukoro - General Surgery
Getachew Desta - Hepatobiliary Surgical Oncology
Grace Nambozi - Perioperative Nursing
Gumbi Hauwa Sanusi - Obstetrics & Gynaecology
Hamad Al Jaber - Plastic & Reconstructive surgery
Ibironke Desalu - Paediatric Anaesthesia
Irene Tosetti - Anaesthesia
James Bernstein - Thoracic, Vascular, Transplantation Surgery
James Geraghty - General & Breast, Endocrine Surgery
Jan Wynands - Plastic & Reconstructive surgery
Jennifer Aunspaugh - Paediatric Anaesthesia
Jennifer Hui Ju Yang - Nursing Anaesthesia
Jeremy Dressler - Colorectal Surgery
John Varallo - Obstetrics & Gynaecology
Juan Carlos Puyana - Trauma Surgery
Judith Stoltz - Visceral Surgeon
Katantazi Abdulsalam - General Surgery
Kelsey Stewart - Obstetrics & Gynaecology
Kerry A. Vaughan - Neurosurgery
Kingsley Ufuoma Tobi - Anaesthesia
Kristen Yee - Plastic & Reconstructive surgery
Lawal-Aiyedun Olubunmi - Paediatric Nursing
Lovenish Bains - General Surgery
Manda Dunne - Nursing Anaesthesia
Marisa Seepersaud - Paediatric Surgery
Matt Kynes - Paediatric Anaesthesiology
Marcus Hoffman - Trauma Surgery
Matthieu Belin – Anaesthesia
Meena Amlani - Radiology
Mgoo Ibrahim – Perioperative Nursing
Michael Eamon Kelly - Colorectal Surgery
Mike Mwachiro - General & Laparoscopic Surgery
Mohamed Badran - Neurosurgery
Morgan P. McMonagle - Vascular & Trauma Surgery
Mugadza Fadzai - Anaesthesia
Nebiyou Bayleyegn – General surgery
Rachel W. Davis - General Surgery
Randa Elsheikh - Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery
Rami Kantar - Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery
Richard Henker - Nursing Anaesthesia
Samson Adera - Cardiac Anaesthesia
Sotonye Fyneface-Ogan - Obstetric Anaesthesia
Tunde Talib Sholadoye - Paediatric Surgery
Valerie Brueton - Perioperative Nursing
Violet Otoki - General Surgery

Charoo Piplani - Research Fellow
Frank-Awat Abaiweh - Medical Student
Godfred Owusu - General Surgery
Kibret Melkamu - General Surgery
Poorvaprabha Patil - Ophthalmology
Ramitha E. Ruwanpathirana – Primary Care Medicine
Tamilarasy Vasanthakumaran - Bachelor of Surgery

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SURGhub is designed primarily for healthcare professionals. Previous medical knowledge is required to understand the contents.The use of any information on this site is undertaken solely at your own risk, and the creators and hosts of this site shall not be liable for any damages, losses, or other injury caused by the use of any information on this site, nor for any reliance on the accuracy or reliability of such information.

Professor Emmanuel Malabo Makasa is a Global Health/Global Surgery Consultant, an Academician, a Researcher and an experianced Clinician. He is the founding Executive Director of the Southern Africa Development Community’s University of Witwatersrand based regional-hub and collaboration Centre for Surgical Healthcare Improvement (WITSSURG) and its spoke, the Centre for Surgical Hdealthcare Research (CSHR) in the Republic of Zambia. He chairs SADC’s Technical Experts Working Group on surgical healthcare, the Partnerships Subcommittee of the Pan-African Surgical Health Forum (PASHeF) and he is the current Secretary General of the International Federation of Surgical Colleges (IFSC). Professor Makasa is a member of the Medical Education and Research Board of the Zambia Medical Association (ZMA MERB), he is a committee member of the Zambia Orthopaedics and Trauma Association (ZOTA) and he also on the board of Trustee for the Lusaka Orthopaedics Research and Education Trust (LORET), Community Without Boarders – Zambian Chapter and Africa Directions (AD).

Professor Emmanuel M Makasa has extensive experience in global health diplomacy, in regional and national surgical (peri-operative) health policy formulation and implementation and he has worked as a senior health systems manager, as honourary lecturer and as a specialist clinician in orthopaedics and Trauma Surgery. He is passionate about improving surgical healthcare in LMIC and has a track record of mobilising and coordinating multiple state and none-state actor stakeholders and partners within the United Nations Systems, in the Global Health/Global Surgery community, health professional groups and within clinical care around surgical systems and service delivery improvement. He has presented on and he has published on safe, timely, equitable, appropriate and affordable universal access to surgical (peri-operative) healthcare in Africa and beyond.

John G. Meara is the Kletjian Professor of Global Surgery, Director of the Program in Global Surgery and Social Change, and Professor of Surgery in the Department of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Meara serves as the Plastic Surgeon-in-Chief of the Department of Plastic & Oral Surgery at Boston Children's Hospital. He was Co-Chair for the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery and was a commissioner on the Lancet Global Health Commission on High Quality Health Systems in the SDG Era and the Lancet Oncology Commission. In 2008 he created the Paul Farmer Global Surgery Fellowship program. He is also interested in value-based health care and implementation science research, including time driven activity-based cost research and outcomes research. Dr. Meara has led several ICHOM projects focusing on outcomes reporting and international benchmarking.

Dr. Meara's interests and innovation activities lie in the areas of craniofacial anomalies, cleft lip and cleft palate, but he has a particular interest in augmenting the delivery of quality surgical and anesthesia care in low-resource settings through long term capacity building. He is involved in multiple global surgery projects looking at the burden of surgical disease, the surgical capacity and health systems building in low-resource environments, surgical education and the economic impact of untreated surgical disease. He is also interested in value based health care and implementation science research, including time driven activity based cost research and outcomes research. Dr. Meara has led several ICHOM projects focusing on outcomes reporting and international benchmarking. Since 2008, he has directed the Paul Farmer Global Surgery Fellowship program in collaboration with Partners In Health. Its purpose is to strengthen global surgical systems through a combination of research, advocacy, and implementation science as well as train leaders who will further promote surgical care, education, and research pertinent to global surgery.

Dr. Atun is Professor of Global Health Systems at Harvard University and the Faculty Chair of the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program. In 2008-12 he served as a member of the Executive Management Team of the Global Fund as Director of Strategy, Performance and Evaluation where he chaired the panel that oversaw annual investments of ~US$4 billion each year.

In 2006-2013 Dr. Atun was a Professor of International Health Management at Imperial College London, where he led the Centre for Health Management and was involved as founder, adviser and investor in biotech and health technology companies. He is a visiting professor at University of Kyoto, Japan.

Professor Atun’s research focuses on health system transformation, and innovation. He has published more than 350 papers in leading journals such as NEJM, Lancet, JAMA, Academy of Management Journal, Lancet Oncology, Lancet Global Health and Science Translational Medicine.

Prof Atun has advised more than 30 governments on health policy, strategy and health system reform, and has consulted for the World Bank, WHO and leading organizations such as Medtronic, Merck & Co, Novartis, Hoffman-La Roche. In 2019-20 he was a senior advisor to the G20 Presidency.

Professor Atun served as a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine Committee on Health Systems. He also served on the Advisory Boards of WHO Research Centre for Health Development in Japan and the Norwegian Research Council’s Programme for Global Health Research. He Chaired the STOP TB Partnership Coordinating Board in 2009-2011, and was as a member of the UK Medical Research Council’s Global Health Group. He is a member of the Longitude Prize Committee – the largest science prize in the world.

Professor Atun studied medicine at University of London as a Commonwealth Scholar and subsequently completed his postgraduate training in family medicine and public health. He obtained a Masters in Business Administration at University of London and Imperial College London. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, the Faculty of Public Health, and the Royal College of General Practitioners.

Professor Atun was appointed President of the GSF Foundation Board in October 2021.

Professor Mark G. Shrime, MD, MPH, PhD, FACS previously served as the O’Brien Chair of Global Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, as the founder and Director of the Center for Global Surgery Evaluation at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and as Research Director for the Program in Global Surgery and Social Change at Harvard.

He is the author of seminal papers on the global burden of surgical disease, the financial burden facing surgical patients, and the number of people who cannot access safe surgery worldwide. He served as a co-author on the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery.

Dr. Shrime graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1996 with a BA in molecular biology. He received his MD from the University of Texas in 2001, after taking a year to teach organic chemistry in Singapore. Medical school was followed by a residency in otolaryngology at the joint Columbia/Cornell program in Manhattan, followed, in turn, by a fellowship in head and neck surgical oncology at the University of Toronto in 2007. He completed a second fellowship in microvascular reconstructive surgery, also at the University of Toronto, in 2008. He was the first to identify a novel independent prognostic indicator in head and neck cancer.

To date, he has worked and taught in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Benin, Togo, Congo, Haiti, Saudi Arabia, Cameroon, and Madagascar. In May, 2011, he graduated with an MPH in global health from the Harvard School of Public Health, where he was a finalist for both the Albert Schweitzer award and the HSPH Student Recognition award, and in May, 2015, he received his PhD in health policy from Harvard University, with a concentration in decision science.

His research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Iris O’Brien Foundation, the Damon Runyon Cancer Foundation, an anonymous donation to the Center for Global Surgery Evaluation, the GE Foundation’s Safe Surgery 2020 project and the Steven C. and Carmella Kletjian Foundation.

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What is the UN Global Surgery Learning Hub?

Who is behind it?

The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR)

The Global Surgery Foundation (GSF)

The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI)

The Project Team

Who chooses the courses?

Project Scope Committee

JEAN O'SULLIVAN

SARA MOHAN

EMILIE JOOS

DHANAJAYA SHARMA

ANA MARIA CRAWFORD

AINHOA COSTAS CHAVARRI

PAULINE WAKE

KARINA OLIVO

Content Committee

ANDREA PARKER

JACKIE ROWLES

LUBNA KAHN

MUSLIU ADETOLA TOLANI

SABINA SIDDIQUI

ADOLFO LEVYA-ALVIZO

RICK GARDNER

RAHEL NARDOS

LUIZ FERNANDO DOS REIS FALCAO

CLAUDE MARTIN JR.

Technical Committee

ADVAIT GANDHE

EMILIO VELIS

ANNA DARELLI-ANDERSON

VINCENZO PALATELLA

USHA GUNESS

REBECCA SILVERS

THOMAS CONNOLLY

SOMPRAKAS BASU

MATTIA FANTINATI

SERGIO NAVARRO

Content Review Panel

Technical Review Panel

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Courses

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Dhananjaya Sharma

Committee MemberGeneral Surgeon

Jean O'Sullivan

Committee ChairEmergency Medicine Physician

Emilie Joos

Committee MemberTrauma Surgeon

Pauline Wake

Committee MemberAnaesthesiologist

Ainhoa Costas

Committee MemberGeneral Surgeon

Sara Mohan

Committee MemberGynaecologist

Jackie Rowles

Committee Vice ChairNurse Anaesthetist

Rahel Nardos

Committee MemberGynaecologist

Claude Martin Jr.

Committee MemberOrthopaedic Surgeon

Adolfo Leyva-Alvizo

Committee MemberGeneral Surgeon

Andrea Parker

Committee Chair General Surgeon

Lubna Kahn

Committee MemberGeneral Surgeon

Musliu Adetola Tolani

Committee MemberUrologic Surgeon

Sabina Siddiqui

Committee MemberPaediatric Surgeon

Rick Gardner

Committee MemberOrthopaedic Surgeon

Luiz Fernando dos Reis Falcão

Committee MemberAnaesthesiologist

Committee Member
General Surgeon

Committee Chair
Emergency Medicine Physician

Committee Member
Trauma Surgeon

Committee Member
Anaesthesiologist

Committee Member
General Surgeon

Committee Member
Gynaecologist

Committee Vice Chair
Nurse Anaesthetist

Committee Member
Gynaecologist

Committee Member
Orthopaedic Surgeon

Committee Member
General Surgeon

Committee Chair
General Surgeon

Committee Member
General Surgeon

Committee Member
Urologic Surgeon

Committee Member
Paediatric Surgeon

Committee Member
Orthopaedic Surgeon

Committee Member
Anaesthesiologist

Technical Advisor
Pediatric Neurosurgery & Critical Care Nurse Practictioner

Committee Chair
General Surgeon

Committee Member
E-learning Expert

Committe Member
Educationalist

Committee Vice Chair
Information Specialist

Committee Member
Orthopaedic Surgeon & E-learning Expert

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Anesthesiology & Critical Care Medicine

Committee Member
General Surgeon

Committee Member
Nurse

Committee Member
Intellectual Property Lawyer

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General Surgeon