Expansion of national surgical, obstetric, and anaesthesia plans in Latin America: can Brazil be next?

On the sidelines of the 75th Session of the Regional Committee of the World Health Organization for the Americas, the Republic of Ecuador hosted an event to expand on National Surgical, Obstetric, and Anaesthesia Plans (NSOAPs). NSOAPs are policy frameworks that offer governments a pathway to incorporate surgical planning into their overall health strategies. In Latin America, Ecuador became the fi rst country to lead the development of an NSOAP and is fostering regional efforts for other Latin American countries to have sustainable surgical strengthening plans. Brazil is a prominent candidate for enrolling in an NSOAP process to enhance its public health system ' s functionality. An NSOAP in Brazil can help mitigate social disparities, promote greater eff i ciency in allocating existing resources, and optimise public health system fi nancing. This process can also encourage the creation of resources and distinct NSOAP vocabulary in Portuguese to facilitate the development of NSOAPs in other Portuguese-speaking and lowand middle-income countries. In this viewpoint, we explore why an NSOAP can bene fi t Brazil ' s surgical system, national features that enable surgical policymaking, and how multiple stakeholder engagement can contribute to the country ' s planning, validation, and implementation of an NSOAP. Copyright (c) 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).