Malibu Catholic physician goes around world to improve women's health

Published: 2004-05-14

LOS ANGELES (CNS) -- Dr. Leo Lagasse has a prescription for Third World nation building: improve the health care of women. Eight years ago, the physician, a member of Our Lady of Malibu Parish, co-founded Medicine for Humanity with Dr. Robert Greenburg to advance the state of women's health in developing countries. Lagasse is a surgeon and a specialist in gynecologic cancer, known as a gyn-oncologist, at Cedars-Sinai and Kaiser hospitals in Los Angeles. He believes that one of the most effective ways to improve any society is to help its women. Sharing his conviction are more than 100 medical professionals from prestigious teaching hospitals in the United States who have volunteered on Medicine for Humanity trips to 16 nations. "We are dedicated to the elimination of social, economic and cultural barriers to women's health care," said Lagasse. He recently returned from a mission trip to Ethiopia, Eritrea and Kenya where he operated on patients and worked alongside local surgeons.

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