Background
UNITAR
In 2015, the United Nations Members States adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to guide their actions and progress towards "peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future". Safe, timely, and accessible surgical care is a central part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and is necessary to achieve Universal Health Coverage. The Lancet Commision on Global Surgery has made it clear that the status quo is not an option: almost one third of the global disease burden is surgical, yet over 5 billion people lack access to safe and affordable surgical care.
The development of the existing and future surgical care workforce, through training and education, is key to unlocking the enormous potential in low- and middle-income countries to build surgical systems. Significant high-quality content exists but is distributed across a multiplicity of sites: healthcare providers in low-resource settings often lack access to context and curriculum-appropriate training material.
SURGhub – the United Nations Global Surgery Learning Hub – is an online training platform developed to provide high-quality global surgery learning materials to frontline providers. It primarily leverages existing educational content developed by a variety of partners, including non-governmental organizations and academic medical institutions. Through SURGhub, learners can access surgical, obstetric, nursing, and anaesthesia educational content globally and earn UNITAR certificates of completion. SURGhub is made accessible to users through a UN-based website and a mobile app available on Android or iOS.
SURGhub is an initiative led by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in partnership with the Global Surgery Foundation (GSF) and with a content curation process led by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI). The project contributes to the achievement of SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being) and SDG 4 (Quality Education).
Objectives
Through SURGhub, UNITAR aims to:
- Make high-quality global surgery training materials accessible to frontline providers in low-resource settings through a UN-based platform.
- Empower frontline providers through delivery of practical knowledge in surgery, anaesthesia, gynaecology and obstetrics, and perioperative nursing.
Committees
SURGhub ensures the relevance and quality of its content through a rigorous quality-check process conducted by three project committees. This meticulous review ensures that the global surgery training materials available on our platform are of high quality and contextually relevant.
- Project Scope Committee: The Project Scope Committee is responsible for defining SURGhub’s educational scope – high-level educational aims, target learners, and learning objectives. The Project Scope Committee also considers how SURGhub and its contents interact with academic qualifications and advises on the conceptual framework underpinning the platform layout.
- Content Committee: The Content Committee is responsible for ensuring that high-quality and appropriate global surgery education and training content is selected for inclusion in SURGhub.
- Technical Committee: The Technical Committee is responsible for ensuring that content on SURGhub is of an appropriate technical standard and meets legal standards, such as copyright.
To find more information about SURGhub´s Committees Members, click here.
Work With Us
- Explore how you can actively participate in SURGhub and make a significant impact:
- Make your content available on SURGhub and benefit from being part of a UN-based training platform! Our team of learning experts can help you develop new materials as well as transform existing materials into an e-learning format. Fill in this short survey to start and we will be in touch.
- Visit www.surghub.org and start learning.
For any questions and feedback, write to us at info@surghub.org!
Our team is looking forward to hearing from you!