CEO Stories: Dr. Geoff Tabin, Himalayan Cataract Project

In partnership with Dr. Sanduk Ruit, as cofounders of the Himalayan Cataract Project, the number of lives saved or improved might be over 1 million. They provide high-quality eye care in some of the most remote and/or underserved parts of the world.

PREVENTABLE AND TREATABLE

In the world’s poorest countries, cataracts are responsible for half of all avoidable blindness;and eighty-five percent of blindness is preventable or treatable. Inspired by Foundation Eyecare Himalaya out of The Netherlands, which was performing what Dr. Tabin describes as “miraculous” work—changing the lives of people who were waiting to die—Dr. Tabin changed his focus to global medicine. Eager to help close the gap between care in wealthy and poor countries, he saw an opportunity in doing modern cataract surgery with lens implants. He eventually did a fellowship with Dr. Ruit, who had his own remarkable journey from poverty in Nepal to being a world-class surgeon.

TRAINING, EMPOWERMENT, AND EXPANSION

In addition to performing hundreds of thousands of surgeries themselves, Drs. Tabin and Ruit are training local doctors, nurses, technicians, and doctors in order to expand the program exponentially. They’re hoping to amass the resources to tackle Ethiopia’s backlog of 600,000 people who are blind from cataracts and reverse blindness in Ethiopia and in Ghana, their current places of focus in Africa. With material costs for cataract surgery potentially as low as $25, according to Dr. Tabin, treating blindness could be “the low-hanging fruit” for philanthropists.