Organized global anesthesia efforts at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School are a relatively recent phenomenon. To put this into perspective, I obtained an MPH at the Harvard School of Public Health in 2009 with a concentration in global health. At that time, the public health community viewed the idea of an anesthesiologist interested in public health, much less global health, as not only particularly strange, but it was also unclear if anesthesiologists even understood the nature of a true public health issue. I was told that TB, malaria, and HIV were real problems (which is true), while lack of access to safe and effective surgery and anesthesia was absolutely not a big problem (which is patently false). Surgery and anesthesia were viewed as health care interventions that were too expensive and technology driven to be implemented in low- and middle-income countries.
While health priorities like infectious diseases remain...
