A Crucial Role for Surgery in Reaching the UN Millennium Development Goals

Abstract

In the June 2008 issue of PLoS Medicine, Doruk Ozgediz and Robert Riviello made a convincing case that surgical conditions should be considered as “neglected diseases” disproportionately affecting the world’s poorest people [1]. “Patients with untreated surgical conditions,” they wrote, “as well as the local clinicians struggling to care for them, must gain greater recognition by the global public health community.” We welcome their call to bring surgery into the global health conversation.