"Supplying the Surgical Needs of Developing Countries"

Abstract

Introduction It has been my good fortune over the last 30 years to have connections with some 75 rural hospitals in East Africa and I have been able to visit others in different parts of Africa and the Middle East and briefly in South America and Asia. Looking through the annual reports of a representative group of these hospitals in East Africa I have tried to discover the pattern of surgical disease which occurs. These hospitals may be Government hospitals or Mission hospitals, usually have an average of around 100 beds and serve a population of 250,000 people. They are staffed by one or two or three doctors assisted by nurses and medical auxiliaries. The one doctor hospital is something we would like to see disappear and this will occur directly recruitment is adequate which in turn depends on the number of graduates being turned out by the Medical School. I shall concentrate my remarks on the district and mission hospitals as these are the institutions which take the brunt of the surgical load. The situation of provincial hospitals and central reference hospitals is a somewhat different problem.