On June 16, medical history was made when an Angolan man was operated on by a robotic surgery procedure. Not that this was the first robotic surgery performed on the continent, however, in this case, the surgeon was in Miami, Florida, and the operation was performed via fiber-optic computer connection.
Conducting the surgery was Dr. Vipul Patel, the director of the Global Institute of Advent Health in Orlando, Florida. On the operating table was 67-year-old Fernando da Silva, who had been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in March.
Dr. Patel said that he had been, “searching the globe for the last two years,” in an attempt to find just the right technologies, approaching the effort as if it were the equivalent of a Moon landing. “We made sure we had plan A, B, C, and D, including a back-up team on sight,” he said. “The humanitarian implications are enormous. Internationally, obviously, there’s so many under-served areas of the world.”
