DCP3's First Volume - Essential Surgery - Debuted at Academic Conference
DCP3 celebrated the publication of the Essential Surgery volume with presentations by the volume's editors in front of a standing-room only crowd on March 26, 2015 at the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) 6th Annual Conference in Boston, MA. The DCP3 authors show that improving access to surgical care could save 1.5 million lives per year in low-resource countries. They identify 44 essential and cost-effective surgical procedures that can be performed in first-level hospitals by teams of surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses and other healthcare workers. These essential procedures deal with everyday occurrences which can become life-threatening or debilitating in a poor setting - such as broken bones from road injuries, removal of abscess teeth, and C-section.
The panel at CUGH featured the following volume editors and authors:
- Haile Debas - University of California, San Francisco
- Peter Donkor - Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology
- Charles Mock - University of Washington
- Atul Gawande- Harvard Medical School
- Margaret Kruk - Harvard School of Public Health
- Olusoji Adeyi - World Bank
- Dean Jamison - University of Washington
Essential Surgery is the first of nine volumes that comprise Disease Control Priorities, 3rd Edition, to be published in 2015 - 2016. Read more
Although surgical procedures are critical to many facets of global health, the myth persists that surgery cannot be a priority in low-resource settings. My colleagues and I began to address this myth in a DCP2 chapter in 2006, boldly putting surgery on an already crowded global health agenda. Continuing this mission in the 3rd edition of the series, I am proud to announce that we have launched the first volume of DCP3, “Essential Surgery.” This volume describes a package of essential and feasible surgeries ranging from emergency obstetric surgery to cataract repair. You can find out more about the global burden of surgical conditions, specific surgical interventions and platforms in low-resource settings, or cost-effective policies to increase access to these lifesaving procedures in our first volume, which is available to download on our website. Best wishes,