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Lipofsky.com
Surgeon and founder of the medical charity Cinterandes. Born in Cuenca, Ecuador, on April 13, 1936, he died from prostate cancer in Cuenca, on March 2, 2015.
When attempts are made to bring basic health care to poor or otherwise marginalised communities, surgical care is almost always the last to appear. The infrastructure and systems required for surgery are daunting and seem prohibitive. In the latter part of his career, however, one Ecuadorean surgeon, Edgar Rodas, upended this situation. "He spent many years going by donkey, or walking, or using any means necessary to visit the people of the highlands and get to remote villages", says Ray Price, Professor of Surgery at the University of Utah School of Medicine. "He was devoted to what he did." But despite his best efforts it often proved difficult to provide the care Rodas so desired without the supporting surgical infrastructure. Then, 15 years ago, Rodas came up with an idea as imaginative as it was bold: buy a truck, convert it into a mobile operating theatre, and take the infrastructure, systems, and clinicians to the people, wherever they might be. It worked.
The seeds of this idea were...