SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) – A local eye doctor brings sight to the blind in third world countries.
White and blue eye patches cover their eyes, but you could consider these people to be the lucky ones. They live in Nepal, and they got surgery to remove the cataracts completely clouding over their pupils.
“In our world there are 20 million people who can not see the shadow of a hand moving in front of their face, because of completely treatable cataracts,” says Dr. Geoffrey Tabin, Moran Eye Center.
It’s a treatable disease if a person has access to an eye surgeon, but those living in 3rd world countries rarely do, and that was troubling to Dr. Tabin. He’s been practicing ophthalmology for the past 20 years.
“I saw that there was no real training for eye surgeons in Nepal”.
Tabin devoted his life working alongside another doctor. Together they discovered a way they could take a surgery that costs thousands of dollars in America and do it for under $20 in Nepal.
“We are really trying to train the leaders of the next generation of doctors for the developing world.”
Using his skills he spent years perfecting, Dr. Tabin began training poorly skilled doctors in developing countries how to perform a surgery that could immediately give people back their sight.
“It was the most exciting thing seeing modern cataract surgery with a foreign team that came in and did the surgery, and people would just blossom back to life. It was the greatest miracle I’d ever seen.”
A miracle that’s turning Nepal into a training ground where more doctors living in 3rd world countries can gain the valuable skills they need to know to make a difference.
“Seeing a doctor who had no skills, then seeing them teach other doctors is real wonderful.”
They’re teachable skills now transforming Africa, a place Dr. Tabin calls a continent of blindness, by eradicating preventable and curable blindness.
Dr. Tabin will be hosting a fundraiser this Saturday at Snowbird. Money raised from a live auction, a reception, and a dinner will all go towards helping to bring the gift of sight to those living in Africa. For more information visit www.cureblindness.org.
