**6.2 The role of countries' health system in avoiding the occurrence of abdominal trauma and its complications**

Evidences are clear all countries should opt to maximize health status of their populations. Through health system which is defined as all organizations, people, and actions whose primary intents are to promote or restore or maintain health; countries can optimize health status of their population without leaving any one behind. From 2015 all worlds' countries opted to achieve sustainable development goals (which are the extension of millennium development goals) by 2030 [14]. With regard to surgical practice, in 2015 global lancet commission on surgery was established upon recognizing the fact that, globally about 5 billion people had no easy access to surgical care services [14, 15]. This commission is in line to support countries to achieve sustainable development goals through ensuring easy access to surgical services at any time.

Intuitively, by looking on the coverage of various countries towards achieving this commission, many are still needed to be done. Worldwide (especially in developing countries) equitable access to affordable surgical services, safe anesthesia remains a serious problem for many surgical patients including those who sustain abdominal trauma. As such poor outcomes are ever reported for these patients. The World is advancing solving old problems with new solutions is an effective and efficient way for mitigating various problems of Worlds' populations. In the province of abdominal trauma care, scientists have devised various approaches designed to mitigate the burden caused by abdominal trauma. Among those approaches include: (1) use of



**Table 12.**

*Highlights of some aspects of some available management approaches for abdominal trauma.*

damage control strategy, (2) use of laparoscopy for therapeutic and diagnostic purpose, (3) use of embolization strategy to control bleeding, (4) reducing the rate of operative management for traumatic abdominal injuries, and (5) enhancing health promotion and preventive measures designed to reduce risk factors leading to the occurrence of trauma. The purpose of this chapter is not describing in details these approaches, only few highlights about the significance of these approaches are shown in **Table 12**.

These strategies have been of greater significance in terms of reducing the burden of abdominal trauma in some countries. However, some countries have not utilized these measures optimally due to weak health system. As such unacceptable poor outcomes for traumatic abdominal patients are ever noted. Strengthening trauma care system can support to stop the burden of abdominal trauma. The components of standard trauma care system which should be given the first priority include: prehospital care services, appropriate referral system for traumatic abdominal patients, adequate infrastructure and equipments, practice goal oriented approaches. Shown in **Table 13** are some of the remarks related to these components in terms of avoiding the complications associated with abdominal trauma management.
