Aruyaru Stanley Mwenda
The world burden of surgical disease is disproportionate to the supply of health professional with surgical skills. This disproportion is more pronounced in the developing countries due to low numbers of trained personnel and high burden of disease. Surgical subspecialisation is gaining momentum leaving general surgery with few staff. As a result, the provision of essential surgical care, usually a responsibility of the general surgeon remains below par. In order to bridge this gap, not only do we need to train more general surgeons, it will be productive that all specialists are trained as general surgeons first as this will give them an overall understanding of general surgical needs and the agility to respond to a general surgical emergency even when they are practicing as specialists.