Its general purpose is to reduce "death and disability from road traffic accidents, trauma, burns, falls, pregnancy related complications, domestic violence, disasters and other emergency surgical conditions" by improving collaborations between relevant organizations, institutions, and agencies ("Global Initiative for Essential and Emergency Surgical Health Care" or GIEESC).
Since its inception, GIEESC has grown to include over 2300 members from 140 countries which collaborates to share knowledge, advise policy formation and develop educational resources to reduce the burden of death and disability from conditions that could be treated through surgery.
GIEESC's stated goals include: improving the already existing training and education programs essential to executing emergency surgical care; developing district hospitals' surgical, obstetric, trauma, and anesthesia services; training personnel with the appropriate skills to treat patients; continuing education to maintain those skills; and finally, developing a dependable system that facilitates access to medication and medicinal drugs.
Challenges to those goals include: inadequate equipment to "perform simple but vital interventions such as resuscitation, the provision of oxygen, assessment of anemia, suctions, intercostal drainage and airway support"; insufficient basic supplies; the absence of specialized surgical teams; and the lack of anesthesia.
Hospitals must be clearly committed to educating and training health care professionals to react appropriately when dealing with surgery, trauma, obstetrics and anesthesia.
The GIEESC project started in January 2007 organized a task force to train twenty health care providers (with at least one from nine different zones) in dilation, curettage, cesarean section, and trauma management.
The GIEESC had been holding courses on disaster management and polytrauma, as well as a workshop for surgical technicians, and the founding of the National Program for Infection Control.
Plans for Uganda involved implementing better care to lower levels of health facilities, and providing training and surgical services to camps in rural areas.