The Situation of Safe Surgery and Anaesthesia in Tanzania: A Systematic Review

Improvement in the surgical system requires intersectoral coordination. To achieve this, the development of National Surgical, Obstetric, and Anaesthesia Plans (NSOAPS) has been recommended. One of the first steps of NSOAP development is situational analysis. On the ground situational analyses can be resource intensive and often duplicative. In 2016, the Ministry of Health of Tanzania issued a directive for the creation of an NSOAP. This systematic review aimed to assess if a comprehensive situational analysis could be achieved with existing data. These data would be used for evidence-based priority setting for NSOAP development and streamline any additional data collection needed.

A systematic literature review of scientific literature, grey literature, and policy documents was performed as per PRISMA. Extraction was performed for all articles relating to the five NSOAPS domains: infrastructure, service delivery, workforce, information management, and financing.

1819 unique articles were generated. Full-text screening produced 135 eligible articles; 46 were relevant to surgical infrastructure, 53 to workforce, 81 to service delivery, 11 to finance, and 15 to information management. Rich qualitative and quantitative data were available for each domain.

Despite little systematic data collection around SOA, a thorough literature review provides significant evidence which often have a broader scope, longer timeline and better coverage than can be achieved through snapshot-stratified samples of directed on the ground assessments. Evidence from the review was used during stakeholder discussion to directly inform the NSOAP priorities in Tanzania.