Mark Shrime

Cured into Destitution: Surgery, poverty, and international development

Watch our#KAPTalks with Mark Shrime who discussed the role that strengthening surgical systems can have in international development.

Monday 01.11.2021

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5 billion people around the world cannot access surgical care when they need it, and 81 million people are driven into financial catastrophe every year by the costs of getting surgery. This talk explored the complex and multi-directional interplay between surgical care, poverty, and inequity and discussed the role that strengthening surgical systems can have in international development.

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Professor Mark G. Shrime, MD, MPH, PhD, FACS, is O’Brien Chair of Global Surgery at RCSI (Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland) and Lecturer in Global Health and Social Medicine at the Harvard Medical School. His academic pursuits focus on surgical delivery in low- and middle-income countries, where he has a specific interest in the intersection of health, impoverishment, and inequity. His work aims to determine optimal policies and platforms for surgical delivery that maximize health benefits while simultaneously minimizing the risk of financial catastrophe faced by patients. He is a co-author of Lancet Commission Report, ‘Global Surgery 2030’, which highlighted the deficit in the equity of surgical and anaesthesia care globally. He has received funding and support from the Iris O’Brien Foundation, Enterprise Ireland, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, Mercy Ships, the GE Foundation, the Gates Foundation, National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Aging, and the Government of Norway. In 2018, he was awarded the Arnold P. Gold Humanism in Medicine Award by the American Academy of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery. His new book, Solving for Why, is coming in January 2022 from Twelve / Hachette.

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