Injury has become a major cause of death and disability worldwide. Organized approaches to its prevention and treatment are needed. In terms of treatment, there are many low-cost improvements that could be made to enhance the care of injured persons. The goal of the Guidelines for essential trauma care is to promote such low-cost improvements. These guidelines seek to set achievable standards for trauma treatment services which could realistically be made available to almost every injured person in the world. They then seek to define the resources that would be necessary to assure such care. These include human resources (staffing and training) and physical resources (infrastructure, equipment and supplies). By more clearly defining such services and resources, we hope these guidelines will facilitate the strengthening of trauma treatment services worldwide. The basic premise of these guidelines is that improvements in organization and planning can result in improvements in trauma treatment services and hence in the outcome of injured persons, with minimal increases in expenditures.