Dr Dasmit Singh Khokar, national president of Indian Association of Paediatric Surgeons (Express) Care of children with surgical diseases remains an underappreciated and underfunded area of healthcare despite congenital anomalies making up 9 per cent of the surgical burden of diseases worldwide, of which two-thirds may be avoided with surgical intervention, Pune based Dr Dasmit Singh Khokar, national president of Indian Association of Paediatric Surgeons said.
Dr Singh made the observation on the occasion of the Paediatric Surgery Day (December 29) while talking to The Indian Express. This year’s theme for Paediatric Surgery Day is ‘Your Paediatric surgeon – the safest option for your child’s surgery’.
Dr Singh said that over the years there has been a rise in the number of paediatric surgeries. As much as 40 per cent of India’s population consists of children which is around 55.6 crore. It is estimated that 1 to 2 per cent, (5 to 10 million) children need some kind of surgery in their lifetime. “If the average lifespan is taken as 60 years, then an estimated 92,000 to 1,84,000 children will need surgery each year,” Dr Singh said.
The only way to achieve the goal of controlling preventable deaths of newborns and children under the age of five by 2030 (as per United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals) is through investment in children’s surgery, he opined. Such is the importance of surgery on children that a Global Initiative for Children’s Surgery was initiated in 2016 and a model developed to Advance the Surgical Care of Children by the Commission on Global Surgery regarding surgical care in low and middle-income countries to address the surgical needs of children. The World Health Assembly resolution has recognised the importance of strengthening emergency and essential surgical care as a component of universal healthcare.
Talking about the Paediatric Surgery Day, Dr Singh said, “Multiple programmes have been planned throughout the country in medical colleges apart from awareness campaigns. The celebrations will include distribution of sweets to patients, discounted surgeries where feasible and meetings to commemorate the occasion. In medical colleges, students will be spoken to in order to sensitise them to surgical needs of the paediatric population and motivate them to take up paediatric surgery as their choice of specialisation.”
Trauma, abdominal emergencies and tumours also contribute to the burden of surgical diseases for patients of all ages. It is estimated that one third of all childhood deaths occur due to a surgical condition. An estimated 1.7 billion children and adolescents worldwide did not have access to surgical care in 2017.
According to the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery criteria, less than 3 per cent of the paediatric population in low-income countries and less than 8 per cent in lower-middle-income countries had access to surgical care. Such is the demand for services of a paediatric surgeon. Keeping these goals in mind, the Paediatric Surgical Associations are working incessantly to realise these goals. The Indian Association of Paediatric Surgeons (IAPS) which was founded in 1965, celebrates Paediatric Surgery Day on December 29, the day the association was founded.
“A child is not a miniature adult. The physiological processes in children are different and they cannot express their problems, leaving the child-specialist to figure out the disease process. The paediatric field is so full of challenges that only a handful of doctors are willing to treat them and over the years, the community has grown to the present number of 1,600 in the country with several hundreds more in training,” Dr Singh adds.