North–South surgical training partnerships

I would like to congratulate Greive-Price, et al. for their recently published excellent systematic review of North–South surgical training partnerships.¹ This review should be read by anyone considering establishing or evaluating such a program.

There was an inadvertent omission that I would like to address. In the discussion, the authors cited recent editorials articulating a framework for training partnerships.^2–4 In fact, the citations are all a response to the index editorial that first raised the issue of such frameworks in pediatric surgery.⁵ In that editorial, my co-authors and I confronted the concerns that have stood in the way of enacting effective educational North–South partnerships in our field, presented a model of a successful bidirectional pediatric surgery partnership, and offered mechanisms to avoid surgical adventurism and colonialism.⁶ After several years of discussion and debate instigated by our article, we understand that the American Board of Surgery and the Accreditation Committee for Graduate Medical Education may soon reverse their position and allow such partnerships to take place.