Driven by the Community: SURGhub Surpasses 50,000 Learners

Geneva, Switzerland — SURGhub has surpassed 50,000 registered learners. The milestone reflects a clear principle that has shaped the platform since its inception: SURGhub is a digital platform developed for the global surgical community, by the global surgical community.

Addressing the profound deficit in safe, timely surgical care globally requires a sustained, collaborative commitment to equipping frontline healthcare workforces with world-class clinical expertise.

SURGhub is built on this premise — rooted in the community, and driven by it. The platform integrates educational content from more than 30 institutional partners, alongside the dedication of over 300 individuals supporting the project directly as volunteers, committee members, and peer reviewers.

An important element of this community-based model is a structured network of global SURGhub Ambassadors. In anticipation of the 79th World Health Assembly, we launched a strategic initiative to accelerate outreach to healthcare workers worldwide through the SURGhub Ambassador Programme — a mobilisation that has helped bring the platform past the 50,000 mark.

In this article, we highlight three Ambassadors who have played a particularly strong role during the World Health Assembly period. We spoke with them to understand their motivations, the educational gaps within their local contexts, and the outreach approaches that helped them connect SURGhub with their communities.

As a Program Officer for Mercy Ships in Guinea, Ana Filipa Coelho works on health professions education and workforce development across several African countries. She joined the Ambassador programme after witnessing daily how "the lack of trained health professionals directly affects patients' lives and access to safe care".

As a result, many medical professionals are forced to seek specialisation abroad — a path that "is financially and logistically difficult, and can contribute to workforce migration".

Ana Filipa's background as a dentist shapes her advocacy. She notes that oral health is "frequently overlooked in global surgery conversations, despite the reality that untreated oral diseases profoundly impact systemic health, nutrition, and wellbeing".

🇵🇰 Shahab Afridi, recent Medical Graduate in Pakistan

A recent medical graduate from Ayub Medical College in Pakistan, Shahab Afridi saw an acute disparity between the structured, globally validated educational resources available in major metropolitan centres and those accessible to regional trainees. As founder of Scalpel, a local organisation dedicated to hands-on surgical skills development, he sees SURGhub as the digital mechanism to "bridge that gap and bring top-tier educational tools right to our wards in Pakistan".

Pakistan's healthcare system carries an immense patient volume alongside a pronounced divide between well-funded urban hospitals and under-resourced rural clinics. High clinical workloads frequently push trainees into survival mode rather than structured learning. Because local training relies heavily on traditional apprenticeship models, educational quality depends on the availability of often-overworked senior consultants.

Without high-quality digital alternatives, Afridi says trainees encounter frustrating professional plateaus that "slow down the adoption of newer, evidence-based practices like advanced laparoscopy".

By connecting the platform to the daily academic and clinical challenges faced by local trainees, his approach proved highly effective. Emphasising autonomy in learning, Afridi demonstrated to his peers that "while they cannot always control their hospital rotations, they can absolutely control what they learn on their phones".

🇸🇱 Sheku Dennis Massaquoi, General Surgeon in Sierra Leone

Lieutenant Colonel Sheku Dennis Massaquoi is a General Surgeon in the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces, an Accreditation Committee Member of the Medical and Dental Council of Sierra Leone, and a member of the Technical Working Group for the nation's social health insurance scheme.

With thirteen years of clinical practice behind him, his work reflects a long-term commitment to frontline healthcare workers — viewing accessible surgical education as a way to "empower frontline healthcare workers and contribute to strengthening our surgical system".

Surgical training in Sierra Leone is gradually expanding through postgraduate medical degrees, international partnerships, and task-sharing programmes for associate clinicians. These initiatives aim to bridge the severe shortage of surgical specialists, particularly in rural districts where "maternal and emergency needs are highest".

Massaquoi's mobilisation strategy combined digital dissemination across professional military and medical forums with targeted, formal visits to the leadership of medical and nursing training institutions.

This alignment helped reassure administrators that SURGhub serves to strengthen local curricula and "promotes lifelong learning opportunities for all — in line with Sustainable Development Goal 4."