Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery in Colombia: The Challenge of Integration

➢ The Colombian health-care system ensures universal health-care coverage, but access to timely orthopaedic and trauma care remains fragmented and unevenly distributed.➢ The country faces a high burden of musculoskeletal injuries resulting from interpersonal violence and traffic accidents, the latter of which primarily involve motorcycles➢ The main high-complexity hospitals and subspecialty services are centralized in major urban centers, which generates persistent inequities tied to geographic factors.➢ Colombia has a well-established orthopaedic community, university residency programs, subspecialty societies, international academic partnerships, and a growing educational infrastructure.➢ Future priorities include tiered referral pathways with defined transfer criteria, regional workforce distribution, national orthopaedic injury registries, digital integration, and locally led international collaboration.