Five billion people have no access to safe surgery

LONDON: Five billion people worldwide do not have access to safe and affordable surgery, leading to millions of deaths from common, easily treatable conditions such as appendicitis or fractures, according to new research.

Millions of people worldwide are dying from common, easily treatable conditions such as appendicitis, fractures, or obstructed labour because they do not have access to, or can't afford, proper surgical care, according to a Commission written by a group of 25 leading experts from across the fields of surgery and anaesthesia, published in The Lancet.

Billions of people worldwide do not have access to safe and affordable surgery and anaesthesia when they need it, and access is worst in low-income and lower-middle income countries, where as many as nine out of ten people cannot access basic surgical care, researchers said.

Just under a third of all deaths in 2010 (16.9 million deaths) were from conditions treatable with surgery - well surpassing the number of deaths from HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria combined, they said.

Yet, despite this enormous burden of death and illness - which is largely borne by the world's poorest people - surgery has, until now, been overlooked as a critical need for the health of the world's population.

As a result, untreated surgical conditions have exerted substantial but largely unrecognised negative effects on human health, welfare, and economic development.

"Too many people are dying from common, treatable surgical conditions, such as appendicitis, obstructed labour, and fractures," said Lars Hagander, one of the Commission's lead authors, from Lund University, Sweden.

"The problem is especially acute in the low- and middle-income countries of eastern, western and central sub-Saharan Africa, and South and Southeast Asia," said Hagander.