Meet the people changing the world of organ transplants

The World Bank estimates that iron deficiency is a $50 billion drain on global GDP. In Cambodia, one entrepreneur has marketed little blocks of metal that are dropped in cooking pots and slowly release iron, entering the cooked food.

In the past, people in poor countries who became blind due to cataracts often had no hope of improvement because of the high costs of treatment. Nepalese ophthalmologist, Sanduk Ruit, perfected a cheap and effective cataract removal technique which allows his patients to see again.

If you've got a life-threatening medical condition, your first call might not be to an economist. But Alvin Roth used a theory about matching markets to help connect kidney patients and donors.

Organ donation waiting lists can often hold wait times of months or even years. Thousands of lives could be saved with better ways to reach to the millions of Americans willing to donate an organ.

The typical surgery for hydrocephalus, a brain swelling disease, often leads to infection. Medical constraints in Uganda inspired a neurosurgeon to create a safer and more effective surgery which is now used in Uganda and the U.S.

In Zambia, the need for surgery is just as common as in the United States - doctors, however, are rare. So Zambia is training clinical officers – with no medical degrees – to do C-sections and hernia repairs.

An Oklahoma surgery center made news by posting its prices online – a revolutionary idea in an industry where consumers normally are buying blind. This is a big reason health care costs so much, but recent months have seen great advances in transparency.

When a heart attack happens, the time of care and treatment is of utmost importance. Many people die of heart attacks every year because too much time passes between the care of emergency staff and the hospital cardiologists. New protocols, and new technology that transmits the EKG of a patient to the hospital before arrival, enable medical professionals to quickly and efficiently treat patients, thus saving lives.

Even though most central line infections are preventable, they are a leading cause of death in the United States. The core of the problem resides in a hospital's approach, whether they put the effort into treating patients like they are in a car crash or a plane crash. Roseville Medical Center looked at the mistakes of other hospitals and have revolutionized how they treat central lines with a new checklist, a specialized vascular team tasked with the central lines, and annual competency tests for contract nurses.

Hepatitis C is a deadly disease that has yet to be eradicated in the United States (and worldwide). Organizations in El Paso and across the country are working to get people tested and treated for the virus.