Pediatrics Surgery and Outcomes in Resource Limited Communities in Morogoro Tanzania

Introduction: Surgery in children is important medical component in clinical aspect both emergence and elective aiming to life serving, preventing disability and improvement of quality of life in diseased children. The cause of surgery in children are of different categories but can be grouped int emergency and elective and about 71% of surgeries in some countries in Africa are due to congenital inguinal scrotal disorders. The causes may differ from one country to the other. This study aimed to evaluate the surgical services being provided at Saint Francis Rural Referral Hospital in Tanzania. Methodology: The retrospective study was done at Saint Francis Referral Hospital Ifakara Tanzania by using hospital data of the operated children from 2018 to 2024. Non probability purposive sampling was applied to collected the required information by using data collecting checklist. All meeting criteria were included. Data analysis was done by using SPSS version 26. Results: A total of 349 children were operated during the period involving 65.6% of males and 34.4% females. Most of the patients operated were between 2 to 5 years and 6 to 16 years with the mean age of 2  5years. Otolaryngology, general surgery, orthopedic and urology were the surgeries done in this study. Among the operated children 24.1% developed post-operative complications and there was 4.58% mortality rate. Conclusion: Pediatric surgical care in rural hospitals is very important as among especially life serving procedures in rural regions. Improvement of pediatric surgical care and availability of pediatric nurses’ specialist is highly recommended.