The Lancet Global Health open-access journal launched a special issue focused on Global Surgery this month. In the wake of the launch of their Commission on Global Surgery and in anticipation of the World Health Organization’s 68th World Health Assembly, The Lancet Global Health provided new research that reveals the shocking inequity in access to surgical services worldwide.
In the journal’s opening editorial, The Lancet Global Health Editor Zo Mullan highlighted the importance of surgery in global health: “Maternal and neonatal mortality targets, injury targets, cancer targets, poverty targets—none of these are remotely achievable without improved access to caesarean sections, fracture management, and tumour resection, and without bold new strategies for improving the affordability of procedures that save lives but condemn recipients to poverty.”
Surgery is an essential component of global health; patients in resource-scarce countries deserve access to life-saving procedures. However, without educated and trained health workers, this is not possible.
At Health Volunteers Overseas, we have launched a number of projects that seek to improve global access to quality essential surgery. In places like Vietnam and Malawi, HVO volunteers work to improve the quality of anesthesia care. In Ghana and Nicaragua, hand surgeons work with local staff to improve techniques and training in the operating room. HVO’s oncology project in Honduras and Vietnam include surgical instruction for local staff to improve treatment options for growing numbers of cancer patients. Our orthopaedics projects in countries like Bhutan, Malawi, Myanmar and Uganda seek to empower orthopaedic surgeons with knowledge and professional opportunity so that they can best serve their injured and disabled patients.
Learn more about HVO’s essential surgery projects. Visit our project finder and search “Essential Surgery” or visit our program page featuring your specialty area.