Neglected Surgical Diseases™ cause profound isolation, social stigma, enormous suffering, and massive loss of economic output. They are not treated in most primary-care settings, and they fall through every gap in global health funding. Children and women are the worst affected. Yet safe, cost-effective interventions could avert an estimated 17 million deaths and 77 million disability-adjusted life-years annually.
01 / CLEFT LIP & PALATE
A child's first smile, repaired.
$250 · per repair
Untreated clefts mean malnutrition, speech loss, and lifelong exclusion — preventable with one operation in infancy.
02 / CLUBFOOT
Walking, restored.
$350 · per course
The Ponseti method corrects clubfoot without major surgery. Untreated, it ends schooling and work before they begin.
03 / CATARACT
Sight, in twenty minutes.
$25 · per eye
The world's leading cause of avoidable blindness — reversed by one of the cheapest operations in all of medicine.
04 / HERNIA
Back to work, back to life.
$100 · per surgery
~200M unmet need globally — the single largest surgical backlog by case count. Prevents strangulation, restores work.
05 / OBSTETRIC FISTULA
Brought back from exile.
$300–400 · per repair
Women cast out of family and village over a childbirth injury — repairable, with dignity restored, in one admission.
06 / NEGLECTED INJURIES
Burns. Malunions. Fractures.
$150–300 · per case
Trauma is the #1 killer of people aged 15–44 in low- and middle-income countries. ~2M severe cases left untreated.
