Historically, “global surgery” publications often circulated around short-term missions of surgeons from high-income countries visiting low-income countries. The reports would include a description of the high number of patients operated on during the mission, accompanied with a photo of the team in the operating room and a happy patient in colourful clothing. There would be very little additional information about the outcomes of these procedures, in particular in the longer term, as the teams usually left shortly after carrying out the surgeries. Volume of surgery was the main outcome measure in these reports.