During the onset of the coronavirus in the country, elective surgeries across all government hospitals were suspended in March, forcing thousands of Kenyans in need of one or more of these scheduled surgeries to restore their lives to adjust.

A new study released Saturday says that a staggering 28 million elective surgeries across the globe could be cancelled as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic leading to patients facing lengthy waits for their health issues to be resolved.

The modelling study, published in the British Journal of Surgery, indicates that each additional week of disruption to hospital services will be associated with a further 2.4 million cancellations.

According to the CovidSurg Collaborative projections, based on a three-month period of peak disruption to hospital services due to Covid-19, 28.4 million elective surgeries worldwide will be cancelled or postponed in 2020.

Led by researchers at the University of Birmingham, researchers collected detailed information from surgeons across 359 hospitals and 71 countries on plans for cancellation of elective surgery.