2008 References

-Surgery and Global Health: A View from Beyond the O.R.

Surgery and Global Health: A View from Beyond the O.R.

Farmer P.E. and Kim J.Y. Surgery and Global Health: A View from Beyond the O.R. World Journal of Surgery, 2008.

Link: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=18311574

Abstract

In Africa, surgery may be thought of as the neglected stepchild of global public health. There are fewer physicians per population on this continent than on any other; surgeons are rarer still, and almost all of them work in the urban enclaves of what remains a rural region. The story is the same in the poorer parts of Asia and Latin America (with a few exceptions, such as Cuba). Although disease treatable by surgery remains a ranking killer of the world’s poor, major financers of public health have shown that they do not regard surgical disease as a priority even though, for example, more than 500,000 women die each year in childbirth; these deaths are largely attributable to an absence of surgical services and other means of stopping post-partum hemorrhage [1]. Equally unattended, among the very poor, are motor-vehicle and farm accidents, peritonitis, long-bone fractures, and even blindness [2-4]. Cardiac disease, congenital or the sequela of infection, is a death sentence for most people—many of them children—so afflicted in the poorest parts of the world [5, 6]. In some settings, surveys reveal that surgical disease is among the top 15 causes of disability [7], and surgical conditions account for up to 15% of total disability adjusted life years (DALYs) lost worldwide [8].