Africa and the Surgical Imbalance

The CBC's Nick Czernkovich spent three weeks in the Democratic Republic of Congo in April 2010, visiting relief camps and interviewing those involved in trying to stabilize the country. You can read his earlier article The Congo at 50.

The surgical imbalance that Kushner talks about may make it onto the G20 agenda and is the focus of a recent paper co-authored by Surgeons OverSeas, of which he is a co-founder, and the World Health Organization.
In it, researchers examined 132 health-care facilities in eight developing countries only to find that many of the operating room elements vital to safe surgery sometimes couldn't be found.
Four essential items — oxygen, water, electricity and an anesthesia machine — were "always available" in only 21, 50, 36 and 32 per cent of the facilities, respectively.
Indeed, in some places, some or all of these items were "never available," the study reported.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/06/18/f-africa-surgery.html#ixzz0rhI3K1Kx

hat tip Suture for a Living