Belgium and global surgery: quo vadis?

"Belgium and global surgery: quo vadis?." Acta Chirurgica Belgica, 120(3), pp. 202–203

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Dominique Vervoort

Dominique Vervoort is a Belgian doctor (KU Leuven '18) and current MPH/MBA dual degree student at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. Previously, Dominique completed the Paul Farmer Global Surgery Fellowship at the Program in Global Surgery and Social Change at Harvard Medical School. His past research focus and expertise lies within National Surgical, Obstetric, and Anaesthesia Plans (NSOAPs) in Pakistan and West-Africa, and scaling cardiac surgery services in low- and middle-income countries.

Dominique has introduced the concept of global cardiac surgery to literature and established the organisation Global Cardiac Surgery to advocate for the nearly six billion people worldwide without access to cardiac surgical care. Clinically, as an aspiring paediatric cardiac surgeon, his interests lie in congenital heart surgery outcomes and disparities in accessing cardiac care.

Dominique is Co-Founder, Immediate Past Chair, and current Trustee of InciSioN – International Student Surgical Network, the world's largest global surgery trainee organization worldwide with over 5,000 members in over 80 countries. He has given lectures and facilitated workshops on youth engagement in global surgery at conferences around the world and represented the trainee voice in global surgery at high-level forums, such as the World Health Assembly, United Nations General Assembly, and Universal Health Coverage Forum. He serves as a Board Member for the Global Alliance for Rheumatic and Congenital Hearts, Permanent Council Member for the G4 Alliance, and co-Founder of the Gender Equity Initiative in Global Surgery. Dominique has written widely on inequity and gender disparities within global health, and has been featured in the New York Times, the BMJ, JAMA, Al Jazeera, and leading surgery journals.