The Surgical Imperative—Meeting the unmet need of 5 billion people

Although global surgery, as a field, had its inception with the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery’s initial launch, surgeons have been working in global health for decades. The members of the Harvard Global Surgery Coalition have devoted our careers to improving surgery among the poorest of the poor. The Commission convened surgical stakeholders from six continents, and we realized: together, we can do great things. Together, we closed the gap in knowledge and policy in global surgery. Together, we brought surgery into the World Development Indicators. Together, we built a field.

Together, we will go forward. The research gap has been addressed by several articles published in Lancet over the past three years, and we know what we suspected: the disparity is great. Our motive for this competition is to put into action what we found and to invest in the infrastructure necessary to improve surgical outcomes in Sierra Leone. Together.