Five billion people have no access to safe surgery

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.
"In the absence of surgical care, common, easily treatable illnesses become fatal," said Andy Leather, Director of the King's Centre for Global Health, King's College London, UK, and another of the Commission's lead authors.
"The global community cannot continue to ignore this problem - millions of people are already dying unnecessarily, and the need for equitable and affordable access to surgical services is projected to increase in the coming decades, as many of the worst affected countries face rising rates of cancer, cardiovascular disease and road accidents," said Leather.

Of the 313 million operations done worldwide each year, just one in 20 occur in the poorest countries, where over a third of the world's population lives, researchers said.
New estimates find that there is a global shortfall of at least 143 million surgical procedures every year, with some regions needing nearly twice as many additional operations as others.
The Commission also found that a quarter of people worldwide who have a surgical procedure will incur financial catastrophe - costs that they can't afford and which drive them into poverty - as a result of seeking care.