Dismantling Barriers to Latin American Voices in Global Spaces
Across the globe, someone dies every two seconds because they can’t get the surgery they need to save their life. This is the devastating fact that inspires our work in Bolivia and Paraguay. But in addition to our direct work with doctors and patients in our partner countries, we also feel called to press for a systemic change to the inequitable distribution of surgical care around the globe. We do this through active participation in the Global Alliance for Surgical, Obstetric, Trauma and Anesthesia Care (known as the G4 Alliance), a consortium of nonprofit institutions dedicated to filling the unmet surgical needs of patients throughout the world.
One of the guiding principles of the Solidarity Bridge mission is subsidiarity. We make decisions guided by the wisdom of those most directly impacted by the outcome. But throughout history, and still today, the ingrained dynamics of our ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ world create challenges to enacting this principle to the fullest. In our participation in the G4 Alliance, we recognized that Latin American voices have been systematically marginalized in global health discussions. In an effort to bring attention to and to begin to dismantle some of the structural barriers upholding this marginalization, we helped found the G4 Alliance Working Group on Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC WG) in June 2020. This committee is now chaired by Solidarity Bridge Program Director Jodi Grahl and works to bring more attention to specific challenges and the many creative initiatives coming from the region.
Early efforts of the working group included securing Spanish (and sometimes French) interpretation for key activities, and the translation of the G4 Alliance website into Spanish. Both improvements are key to sharing resources and inviting more active participation from practitioners and experts in Latin America.
Our proudest achievement to date is the launch of a monthly speaker series. On the first Tuesday of every month at 4 PM CST, colleagues working in the region—most often doctors or other healthcare providers—report on how they respond to the challenges they face in providing surgery for their community. To date we have heard from: a plastic surgeon heading a burn unit in Guatemala; a critical care nurse and a global surgery fellow increasing access to surgery in rural Nicaragua; a surgeon providing cleft lip treatment in southern Mexico, and an anesthesiologist in Colombia and a surgeon in Peru discussing the challenges of operating during the Covid-19 pandemic. In April we incorporated voices from the Caribbean, hosting Dr. Myron Rolle, a former NFL player who is now a neurosurgery resident at Massachusetts General Hospital and a global surgery fellow at Harvard. He is the founder of the CARICOM Neurosurgical Initiative dedicated to improving access to neurosurgery in his family’s native country, the Bahamas, and the rest of the Caribbean.
Upcoming talks will include a presentation of the Solidarity Bridge/ Puente de Solidaridad Children’s Heart Surgery Program. We will outline how we accompany families throughout the healing process—from diagnosis to medical and surgical treatment and recovery, as well as follow-up care sometimes stretching over years.
The speaker events are most often presented in Spanish, with simultaneous interpretation to English provided. These virtual events are free and open to all. You can register here or through the G4 Alliance website page SOTA Online which also has information on other webinars and online activities of interest.
Remaining true to our motivations and guiding principles, we are pleased to work with colleagues around the globe to advocate for the changes needed to create a more just world.