No Mosquitoes in Great Britain, hence our healthcare is costly
A groin hernia is surgically repaired by placing a synthetic mesh on the weakness and fixing it in place. In UK the mesh currently costs from £20 to more than £100.
This is obviously a significant cost which the rural areas in the developing and poor countries cannot afford. The doctors face an ethical dilemma. Should they refuse to operate since the mesh is unaffordable? Should they do a non-mesh repair which is generally thought to have a many times the recurrence rate of the hernia compared to mesh repair?
Tongaonkar and Reddy, doctors from two small towns in India innovated by cutting mosquito net cloth to shape, sterilised it by autoclave and used it on patients (
http://www.bioline.org.br/request?is03018). They had very good results that compare well with standard international/western results for groin hernia repair. They also had the mosquito net cloth mesh analysed by labs which generally showed it to compare well with commercially manufactured meshes like the ones we use in UK.
The mesh costs a few pennies; it was 3688 times cheaper than the commercial mesh.
Of course surgeons in India accused the Indian Journal of Surgery of blasphemy for publishing Tongaonkar's paper.
Now here is the good news, a UK surgeon Prof Andrew Kingsnorth uses the mosquito cloth net mesh for hernia repair. The not so good news is that he does not use it in the UK, he uses it in a hernia charity in Ghana which he leads/supports
www.operationhernia.org.uk
One of my friends who has interacted with this blog wrote to Andrew Kingsnorth and the conclusion was that red tape will prevent us from using it in UK. I have discussed this with a number of people, at the very end of the discussion we always wondered why we in UK would not take this up even if we save money. Groin hernia mesh is only a £5million market with already many fingers in the pie. £5 million for the NHS is possibly small change. Our discussions normally end at that point.
We are a developed, rich economy, it may well be that our development and our wealth which prevents us from taking up innovations that save money. You would have never guessed that the lack of mosquitoes in UK was one of the reasons for our healthcare being costly!
Hemadri
