My friend and colleague Lea Milligan, who has died unexpectedly aged 38, spent his career working for charities. He was passionate about improving the lives of others, and especially about getting people the healthcare they deserved, whether it was helping to deliver surgical care in West Africa through his work at the international development organisation Mercy Ships, or later as the CEO of MQ Mental Health Research, where he facilitated groundbreaking investigations into a variety of conditions and treatments.
Through Mercy Ships, he joined a team that in 2018 co-founded the Harvard Centre for Global Surgery Evaluation, which seeks to increase access to surgical care and inform surgery policy on a global scale. As part of this project, he oversaw the launch of a British Medical Journal supplement on safe surgical access that has already saved countless lives.
