The earthquake in 2010 that devastated Haiti left an indelible impact on the medical community. It demonstrated how unprepared and powerless we are as a community to manage disasters abroad or at home. Particularly as providers of surgery and anesthesia care, our response was haphazard at best and dangerous at worst. Surgical teams that lacked anesthesia capabilities were either sent back to the United States unable to participate in much needed patient care or continued with critical procedures without the presence of anesthesia providers. The New York Times describes, “The foreign doctors who performed the first amputations after the earthquake used hacksaws. They relied on vodka for sterilization, substituted local numbing for general anesthesia, juryrigged tourniquets from rubber gloves.”1 Eight years later, we have not come far.
Global health is a field dedicated to addressing health problems that transcend national borders. Unlike international health, the field does not focus...
