(Facts and Figures are quoted from the sources below)
- Global Surgery: An area of study, research, practice, and advocacy that seeks to improve health outcomes and achieve health equity for all people who need surgical and anaesthesia care, with a special emphasis on underserved populations and populations in crisis. It uses collaborative, cross-sectoral, and transnational approaches and is a synthesis of population-based strategies with individual surgical and anaesthesia care
- 5 billion people, particularly in low-income and lower-middle-income countries, lack access to safe, affordable surgical and anaesthesia care when needed
- An estimated 16.9 million lives were lost in 2010 from conditions requiring surgical care, surpassing the number of total deaths from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined and representing 32.9% of all deaths worldwide
- 143 million additional surgeries are needed each year in LMICs in order to save lives and prevent disability. Only 6% of the approximately 313 million surgical procedures performed each year occur in the poorest countries, where over a third of the world's population lives
- 33 million people experience catastrophic health expenditure as a result of payment for surgery and anaesthesia each year
- Despite beliefs that providing surgical care is inherently expensive, essential surgical procedures rank among the most cost effective of all health interventions
- Investing in surgical care in LMICs is therefore affordable, saves many lives, and promotes economic growth. Investment in human and physical resources for surgical and anaesthesia care is necessary to meet present and future population demands, as well as to attain local and international health goals in areas such as cardiovascular disease, infection, cancer, injury, and reproductive, maternal, neonatal, and child health
We have to think in a fundamentally different way about health care and surgerys role in it in developing countries. - Jim Yong Kim, 12th President of the World Bank Group
Without surgery, sustainable economic development is a fairly tale, a laughable fiction. - Gavin Yamey, Professor of the Practice of Global Health, Duke Global Health Institute
Sources:
Meara JG, Leather AJ, Hagander L, Alkire BC, Alonso N, Ameh EA, Bickler SW, Conteh L, Dare AJ, Davies J, Mrisier ED, El-Halabi S, Farmer PE, Gawande A, Gillies R, Greenberg SL, Grimes CE, Gruen RL, Ismail EA, Kamara TB, Lavy C, Lundeg G, Mkandawire NC, Raykar NP, Riesel JN, Rodas E, Rose J, Roy N, Shrime MG, Sullivan R, Verguet S, Watters D, Weiser TG, Wilson IH, Yamey G, Yip W. Global Surgery 2030: evidence and solutions for achieving health, welfare, and economic development.; Lancet. 2015 May 30;385(9983):2209-19. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60091-5. Epub 2015 Feb 5. Review. PubMed PMID: 25662414.
Mock CN, Donkor P, Gawande A, Jamison DT, Kruk ME, Debas HT; DCP3 Essential Surgery Author Group. ; Essential surgery: key messages from Disease Control Priorities, 3rd edition.