The Vital Surgery Training Program (VitalSurg) is an 18-month task-sharing initiative that has trained three cohorts of physicians in South Sudan and will expand to the Central African Republic in 2026.
The VitalSurg online course is geared towards non-surgeon physicians to give them the basic knowledge and skills in the management of urgent and life-threatening surgical conditions. Created in partnership with Médecins Sans Frontières, this curriculum contains modules that include didactic material and instructional videos, and are paired with specific technical and clinical skills, evaluated separately using Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) in the field.
We are currently working to create more instructional videos which depict different surgical procedures to supplement the curriculum. These videos are short, informational resources that can be used to teach specific skills or can be reviewed before performing surgery. Examples of videos we have made include Open Chest Tube Insertion, Leg Fasciotomy, and B-Lynch suture, which you can find on our YouTube channel.
three key advantages of Our hybrid training model
1
Expanding access through an open-access curriculum available worldwide, even with low-speed internet
2
Facilitating partnerships with like-minded organizations
3
Reducing environmental impact by minimizing travel-related carbon footprint
UNITAR Partnership
The Global Surgery Lab has partnered with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research to provide worldwide access to Vital Surgery Training Program. The Vital Surgery Training Program is now part of SurgHub, the UN Global Surgery Learning Hub, which is a platform that contains global surgery courses from all around the world. The full course was published on December 30th, 2023. Find the platform here: https://www.surghub.org/
Resources
Our Vital Surgery Training Program is available free of charge. Please contact us to receive a digital copy of the book.
Vital Surgery Training Program eBook
Training Impact
The training program had meaningful effects across multiple domains (Wild et al., 2025). At the individual level, trainees demonstrated significant growth in clinical judgment and technical skill, progressing to independent decision-making and safe execution of essential procedures. Interviewees described increased confidence in both performing procedures and identifying cases that should be referred:
“In my capacity and what I have gained from here is, for example, if I am in a war in the other state hospital or county hospital, I can be able to intervene immediately. I can help the population there… I am also able with my knowledge to detect things that are beyond my capacity, and I will not delay (referral).”
— Trainee
At the patient care level, the program improved service delivery and access to emergency surgical care, particularly during gaps in coverage by IMS surgeons and ObGyns. Indeed, the presence of trained local physicians with essential surgical skills, referred to below as “surgical MDs,” enhanced emergency response capacity and reduced reliance on international staff:
“Before this training, we used to have a challenge of surgical emergencies if we (didn’t) have the expert-surgeon available (…) The patients used to suffer (…) So now if we don’t have a surgeon, we will rely on surgical MDs, who are trained to do emergencies—surgical emergencies and obstretic emergencies.”
— Trainee