Editorial - Rural Surgery

Misconceptions about the surgeons in rural India, generally called rural surgeons, are many. An ASI governing council member once asked me where my bullock cart was! A delegate in the ARSICON-2001 at Patna, reportedly a professor of surgery, is supposed to have expressed that the rural surgeons must restrict themselves to performing hernia and hydrocele surgeries. These are just two examples of the misconceptions that prevail in the minds of our teachers and professional leaders. Rural surgeons do own cars and there are rural surgeons who perform oesophageal operations and the abdominal part of A.P.resection with a laparoscope. It is said that "so long as the lions do not have their own historians, so long will the hunter emerge as heroic, mighty and right". ¹ There are extremely capable rural surgeons as well. This issue of IJS may help to dispel some misconceptions about rural surgeons. The IJS needs to be praised for its special issue on rural surgery because it gives recognition, long overdue, to the surgeons in rural India.