Free cataract surgeries continue to reach people in impoverished and rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. Over the past year, teams operated on 842 patients and reviewed more than 2,850 people across Cameroon, Kenya, Senegal, and Sierra Leone.
The initiative began in 2011 in collaboration with the Spanish NGO Visió Sense Fronteres. Volunteer ophthalmologists, optometrists, and nurses from Spain partner with local medical and community organizations to reach people in slums and remote tribal communities. To date they have performed more than 9,100 procedures and provided over 36,600 pairs of eyeglasses, also travelling to Burkina Faso and Zambia.
Local nurses and volunteers identify patients weeks in advance, often in areas with almost no eye care — in one Kenyan county of a million people, a single ophthalmologist serves an 8,000 km² area. Many patients have been blind for years, making the operations complex and their restored sight truly life-changing. The teams return after one week, one month, and three months to ensure lasting results.
