Identifying and characterizing Surgery, Obstetric, Trauma and Anesthesia care in Uganda: a scoping review of health policy databases.

IntroductionDiseases addressed by surgical, obstetrics, trauma, and anesthesia (SOTA) care are rising globally due to an anticipated rise in the burden of non-communicable diseases and road traffic accidents. Low and middle-income countries (LMICs) disproportionately bear the brunt. Evidence-based policies and political commitment are required to reverse this trend. The Lancet Commission of Global Surgery proposed National Surgical and Obstetrics Plans (NSOAP) to alleviate the respective SOTA burdens in LMICs. NSOAP plans success leverages comprehensive stakeholder engagement and appropriate health policy analyses and recommendations. As Uganda embarks on its NSOAP development, policy prioritization in Uganda remains unexplored. We, therefore, seek to determine the priority given to Surgery, Obstetrics, Anesthesia, and Trauma care in Ugandas health care policy and systems-relevant documents. Methods and analysisWe will conduct a scoping review of SOTA health policy and system-relevant documents produced between 2000 and 2022 using the Arksey and OMalley methodological framework and additional guidance from the Joanna Briggs Institute Reviewers manual. These documents will be sought from the websites of SOTA stakeholders by hand searching. We shall also search from Google scholar and Pubmed using well-defined search strategies. The Knowledge Management Portal for the Ugandan Ministry of Health, which was created to provide evidence-based decision-making data, is the primary source. The rest of the sources will include; other repositories like websites of relevant government institutions, international and national non-governmental organizations, professional associations and councils, and religious and medical bureaus. Data retrieved from the eligible policy and decision-making documents will include the year of publication, the global surgery specialty mentioned, the NSOAP surgical system domain, the national priority area involved, and funding. The data will be collected in a preformed extraction sheet. Two independent reviewers will screen the collected data, and results will be presented as counts and their respective proportions. The findings will be reported narratively using the PRISMA guidelines for scoping reviews. Ethics and disseminationThis study will generate evidence-based information on the state of SOTA care in Ugandas health policy, which will inform NSOAP development in this nation. The reviews findings will be presented to the Ministry of Health planning task force. The study will also be disseminated through a peer-reviewed publication, oral and poster presentations at local, regional, national, and international conferences, and over social media. Strengths and Limitations of the studyThis will be the first scoping review to examine the prioritization of SOTA care in Ugandas health care policy documents. The search strategy includes several electronic databases, including governmental and non-governmental organizations, professional associations and councils, and religious and medical bureaus. The scoping review will conform to the rigorous methodology manual by the Joanna Briggs Institute. However, this scoping review may not capture some documents that arent available online.