Table 1.

Six surgical indicators to evaluate preparedness, service delivery and financial risk of a surgical system

Indicator no.	Indicator	Domain	Definition	Target 2030
1	Access to timely essential surgery	Preparedness	Proportion of population that can access, within 2 h, a facility that can do caesarean delivery, laparotomy and treatment of open fracture (Bellwether procedures)	80% coverage of essential surgical and anaesthesia services per country
2	Specialist surgical workforce density		No. of specialist surgical, anaesthetic and obstetric physicians working per 100 000 population	100% of countries with at least 20 surgical, anaesthetic and obstetric physicians per 100 000 population
3	Surgical volume	Service delivery	Procedures done in an operating theatre, per 100 000 population per year	100% of countries tracking surgical volume; 5000 procedures per 100 000 population
4	Perioperative mortality rate		All‐cause death rate before discharge in patients who have undergone a procedure in an operating theatre, divided by the total number of procedures, presented as a percentage	100% of countries tracking perioperative mortality
5	Protection against impoverishing expenditure	Financial risk	Proportion of households protected against impoverishment from direct out‐of‐pocket payments for surgical and anaesthesia care	100% protection against impoverishment from out‐of‐ pocket payments for surgical and anaesthesia care
6	Protection against catastrophic expenditure		Proportion of households protected against catastrophic expenditure from direct out‐of‐pocket payments for surgical and anaesthesia care	100% protection against catastrophic expenditure from out‐of‐pocket payments for surgical and anaesthesia care