Conversation with Surgeon Dr Geoff Ibbotson
In the latest Episode #21 of The Fading Causes Podcast, we consider why one of the most cost-effective investments in global health is also the most overlooked? I sat down with surgeon Geoffrey Ibbotson, Executive Director of The Global Surgery Foundation to discuss global surgery.
I came to this conversation with a confession. As a medic training in Oxford, surgery was never my calling. I disliked the sight of blood, and after I accidentally nicked the baby during my first solo Caesarean, I took it as a divine signal that I was not safe with the knife. That also taught me to respect those who are more gifted. Some of my most formative lessons came subsequently from illiterate village women surgeons in Bangladesh who steadied my trembling hands as they laboured to mitigate the country’s massive surgical gaps and save countless lives.
Decades later, while we sloganise around Universal Health Coverage, the global surgical gap is wider than ever. Over 17 million people perish each year from surgically treatable or preventable conditions – nearly six-fold the numbers who succumb to HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and Tuberculosis, on which we lavish billions of dollars. And the economic cost of shortened lives and unmanaged life-sapping disabilities from lack of surgical attention translates to US$12 trillion by 2030.
Meanwhile, the stats say that two-thirds of us may need to come under an expertly-wielded during our lifetime. So, why do we tolerate this? Especially when the availability of basic surgery aka “bell weather” procedures can cost as little as two to three dollars per person per year in low-income countries. That great physician/anthropologist Paul Farmer was right when he called surgery the “neglected stepchild” of global health.
In a revealing conversation that draws on his frontline experience from Nepal to South Sudan, Geoff explains how surgical care is more than cutting into bodies. It is the “golden thread” that knits together any sustainable national health system. We also try to navigate through the ethics of modern surgical practices. Are surgeons prostituting their precious skills (there is a 2 million surgical worker shortage) while enriching themselves from the $61 billion cosmetic surgery business? And what about the over-engineered and hideously expensive instrumentation pushed by the private sector, when cheaper, frugal innovations are available?
No one should suffer or die for want of surgical attention.
