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News/Event Item
Providing Surgical Services Should Be Global Public Health Priority
Sept. 2, 2008
By Faith Lapidus
When you think of public health efforts in developing countries, you probably think of childhood vaccinations, programs for clean water, malaria and TB eradication campaigns. Surgery is rarely considered as a tool for improving the health of the world's poorest people. Prompted by an article in their on-line journal suggesting that it should be, the editors of PLoS Medicine have added their voice to the discussion. Faith Lapidus reports.
Gavin Yamey says he and the other editors at PLoS Medicine wanted to make the case that providing surgical services should be thought of as a global health priority. "We absolutely have to consider [surgery] as a building block of global public health," he says, pointing to evidence that surgery–even in the world's poorest countries–is feasible and cost-effective. "It can help to lift people out of poverty," he adds.
The first reason for raising surgery's profile, Yamey says, is that medical conditions requiring surgery make up a substantial proportion of the world's burden of disease. He also points out that even though the developing world accounts for most of the demand for surgical care, it receives the least. Providing that surgical care would boost national health systems and primary care in general, he says, recalling a conversation he had with a surgeon who once worked in Africa. "When you provide surgical services at a district general hospital in rural Africa, his experience is that it raises the overall quality of care at that hospital, and that patients come to that hospital seeking attention for other non-surgical conditions." He says it has a ripple effect, "when you provide surgery, people are more likely to attend for all sorts of other conditions."
© 2008 Voice of America News
For full article, visit:
http://www.voanews.com/english/Science/2008-08-29-voa26.cfm
category: News from Other Sources : General Health News
contributed by Liza Nanni on 4 September 2008
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