A review of practices and policies of international humanitarian organizations in conflict-affected settings: are we ensuring sustainability of surgical care?
Davy Lau, Irena Zivkovic, Apanuba Puhama, Agnes Zanotto Manoel, Naisan Garraway, Shahrzad Joharifard, Emilie Joos · 2026
Read A review of practices and policies of international humanitarian organizations in conflict-affected settings: are we ensuring sustainability of surgical care? by Davy Lau, Irena Zivkovic, Apanuba Puhama, Agnes Zanotto Manoel, Naisan Garraway, Shahrzad Joharifard, Emilie Joos (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13471627.txt.
Description
Lau and colleagues audited whether humanitarian organizations running surgery in war zones build services that survive after they leave. Their 2026 review screened 1,057 articles and kept 29, describing 54 surgical programs run by 17 organizations, most often Médecins Sans Frontières, and scored them against six sustainability pillars.
Education led the pillars: context-relevant training appeared in 94.4% of programs, multidisciplinary involvement in 74.1%, and outcome measurement in 72.2% of them. The handover end was weak, with transfer to local stakeholders in only 18.5% of programs and multisource funding in 13.0% of them. Escalating violence permanently closed 13.0% of programs and interrupted 9.3%, and only six organizations had public policies at all.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Davy Lau, Irena Zivkovic, Apanuba Puhama, Agnes Zanotto Manoel, Naisan Garraway, Shahrzad Joharifard, Emilie Joos |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 53 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |