Paediatrics and Paediatric Surgery in Low Income Countries: Challenges and Expectations

Low economic environments often lack the resources to send staff overseas for high intensity training and access to up to date literature is either difficult or not in their native language. Healthcare workers in these areas struggle to meet the demands of their society. On the other hand western societies have greater resources and have been fortunate to avail of extensive training in a variety of techniques and skills.

While primary health care is a vital aspect of care in all societies, secondary and tertiary pediatric surgical care is also a social imperative for the health and wealth of any nation. This Research Topic seeks to describe the myriad of problems faced by low income healthcare economies and by western societies' doctors to convey training despite the efforts they make to assist local standards.

Issues of appropriateness of such "drop-in" services, including ethical and practical matters will be discussed across a wide variety of surgical specialties. The impact of such exposure on the standard of "donor" health services, an often unrecognized aspect of these engagements will also be discussed as will the importance of altruism awareness in undergraduate medical education.  

The goal of this Research Topic is:

• To highlight the contribution to all areas of surgical intervention in low income countries
• To critically analyze the impact of such a contribution
• To encourage engagement in these efforts to provide templates for similar activity

We welcome research, covering but not limited to, the following themes:

• Reports from the field
• Reports that detail the challenges faced by local teams
• Detail the logistics of these activities
• Review the ethical principles that envelop these activities
• To encourage altruism more widely