Advancing Essential Trauma Care through the partner organizations: IATSIC, ISS-SIC, and WHO

The publication Guidelines for Essential Trauma Care offers an opportunity to improve trauma care services in an affordable and sustainable fashion, primarily through improved organization and planning. The publication will be useful, however, only if it actually catalyzes improvements in trauma care in health care facilities in individual countries, especially those low- and middle-income countries with the greatest needs. There is much that can be done to make this happen on the part of the partners that created these recommendations, including IATSIC (International Association for Trauma Surgery and Intensive Care); ISS-SIC (International Society of Surgery-Société Internationale de Chirurgie); and WHO (World Health Organization). This includes such activities as organizing multi-sectoral stakeholders' meetings to adapt the Essential Trauma Care (EsTC) criteria to local needs; conducting trauma care needs assessments to identify priorities for low-cost improvements; having surgical colleges and societies throughout the world endorse the Guidelines; lobbying ministries of health to incorporate the EsTC recommendations into health policy; and seeking to integrate the EsTC recommendations into the 2-year action plans of WHO country offices. In all of these activities, surgeons and others who care for the injured can play a pivotal role, especially working collaboratively with their own ministries of health and WHO country offices.