Advocacy
Anaesthetists, other healthcare workers and non-clinical partners all have an important voice in international healthcare advocacy
Our Advocacy Work
We are passionate about our advocacy work, campaigning for the development of safe anaesthetic and critical care in low and middle-income country nations and greater support for pandemic management.
Our partnerships witnessed the challenging impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whilst healthcare services fought through difficult economic challenges, access to vital resources for pandemic management further overstretched all areas of healthcare, including the ability to provide patients with safe and high-quality anaesthetic care. In addition, issues of vaccine inequity, insufficient hospital oxygen systems for safe patient care and management of COVID-19 cases, and the loss of UK aid, all summated to further compromise safe patient care. As a result, our advocacy work has hugely expanded since the COVID-19 pandemic.
We have been focusing on the three global health issues that have affected our partnerships the most:
Insufficient Oxygen Capacity
Oxygen is the most precious medicine we have. Despite oxygen capacity being so fundamental, many healthcare systems around the world lack the oxygen infrastructure needed to provide safe anaesthetic and medical care. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed how significant these gaps are.
Vaccine Inequity
At the time of writing, 3.5 billion people around the world have not yet had one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, with only 8% of individuals in low-income countries so far vaccinated. This has a significant implication on the global pandemic as the low rates of vaccination combined with social factors more common in low and middle-income countries (like high-density living) mean that outbreaks are likely to continue to occur resulting in new variants.
Loss of significant UK Aid Funding
In 2021, large cuts were made in UK overseas development aid, resulting in a £45 billion loss for essential health, education, social and humanitarian work worldwide. Of this, an estimated £48 million has been lost for health education. It is not just the funding that is lost in these cases. A huge number of volunteer and staff hours have been lost in vital areas of project work. In addition, in order to prevent regression of these projects, often more hours and more funding needs to be invested, taking capacity from other vital areas of work.
Our advocacy work has addressed these inequalities in the following ways:
A Letter to Government
We wrote a response letter to the UK government urging for better UK engagement in overseas vaccination support and urgent reversal of the decision to cut UK Aid. This Letter was co-signed by 13 UK anaesthetic organisations.
A Story on C4 News
We worked with Channel 4 news to raise awareness of the issues faced in Zambia during the third wave of COVID-19.
An International Podcast
We worked with the Royal College of Anaesthetists to produce a podcast discussing the issues affecting caring for patients with COVID-19 in Zambia.
Recorded Videos
We have made multiple campaign videos discussing these issues.
Lobbying Government
Following on from our advocacy work in 2021, in 2022 ZADP worked in partnership with the Tropical Health and Education Trust (THET) and ONE to communicate issues of vaccine inequity, the value of bilateral health system strengthening through international partnerships, and the vital need for restoration of UK Aid, to policy-makers including UK politicians at an event at the House of Commons.
Medical Literature
We use our voice to engage the medical community by exposing issues through articles in the medical literature, encouraging other healthcare workers including anaesthetists to support our campaigning.
Meet The Team
GADP was created and continues to be guided by a dedicated and diverse team of individuals with a shared desire to improve global access to safe anaesthesia care.
Read Our 2022 Impact Report
We are delighted to share with you our latest ZADP Impact Report celebrating the achievements and learning of 2022. The report showcases how we continue to navigate challenges to build safer anaesthetic care in Zambia.