An estimated two-thirds of the world's children and adolescents, most of whom live in low- and middle- income countries lack access to safe, quality, and timely surgical care. While much efforts have been made in the last decade to advocate for children’ surgery, several economic and policy gaps remain, hampering progress and investments. These gaps range from lack of adequate data on costs and cost-effectiveness, high rate of out-of-pocket payments and limited health insurance coverage, to non-inclusion of children's surgical care in public child health policies and surgical plans. Given the magnitude of the limitations, actions and initiatives need to be prioritised to facilitate coordinated investments. Urgent investments are required to generate reliable and convincing data on costs of children's surgical care, as well as costs of equipment and supplies. To support actions and initiatives, children's surgery should be included in any existing and planned child public health initiatives and surgical plans. Integration of injury prevention and early identification of surgical conditions into school health initiatives would also strengthen care. The overall return on investment in children's surgical care are enormous with implications for child survival, family, and society stability as well as country workforce and economy. Investments should be well coordinated at country, regional and global levels to avoid waste of resources and duplication of efforts, while encouraging convergence of efforts.

据估计，世界上三分之二的儿童和青少年（其中大多数生活在低收入和中等收入国家）无法获得安全、优质和及时的手术护理。尽管过去十年来为倡导儿童手术做出了很大努力，但仍然存在一些经济和政策差距，阻碍了进展和投资。这些差距包括缺乏关于费用和成本效益的充分数据、自付费用率高和健康保险覆盖范围有限，以及公共儿童健康政策和手术计划中未纳入儿童外科护理。鉴于限制的严重性，需要优先考虑行动和举措，以促进协调投资。需要紧急投资来生成有关儿童手术护理费用以及设备和用品费用的可靠且令人信服的数据。为了支持行动和倡议，儿童手术应纳入任何现有和计划中的儿童公共卫生倡议和手术计划。将伤害预防和早期识别手术状况纳入学校卫生举措也将加强护理。儿童外科护理的总体投资回报是巨大的，对儿童生存、家庭和社会稳定以及国家劳动力和经济都有影响。投资应在国家、区域和全球各级得到良好协调，以避免资源浪费和重复努力，同时鼓励各方努力的融合。