A global nonprofit working to help people retain or regain their eyesight was denied federal funds from the Trump administration last week to expand its work into several African countries.
Dr. Geoff Tabin, who runs the Cure Blindness Project, spoke at the Pitkin County Library last Thursday as part of Aspen Skiing Company’s “Aspen U Speaker Series” hours after hearing the news.
He received an email saying the nearly $2 million in U.S. Agency for International Development grants for expansion into Ghana, Ethiopia and Rwanda are permanently gone, limiting his capacity to improve services in Africa.
“We have one country, which is a great success, a few countries where we're having improvements, but we're struggling a little bit in Africa,” he said last week. “(Grants) are quite, quite crucial to our work.”
Since its founding in 1995, Cure Blindness Project has funded and performed millions of surgeries, screenings and treatments in 30 countries, but the efforts originally began in Nepal.
A self-proclaimed Yosemite rock-climbing bum, Tabin made the first ascent of the last unclimbed face on Mount Everest during his first year of medical school in 1983, discovering a disparity in quality and access to healthcare in developing countries.
“It was just accepted that you get old, your hair turns white, your eyes turn white and then you die,” Tabin said. “And in all of my medical training, I had never seen cataracts like this. In Nepal at that time, there was no one doing cataract surgery.”
Tabin said one of the biggest reasons for the high number of cataracts in Nepal is the lack of doctors, but there is also a genetic predilection to have earlier cataracts in southeast Asia.
Intense UV light causes oxidative damage in the lens proteins, which leads to more aggressive and visually blocking cataracts. When this is combined with a lack of antioxidants in the diet, changes in the lens accelerate as well.
Excessive fluid shifts, from chronic diarrhea to dysentery, also causes cataracts at an earlier age.
“In America, when your vision starts getting a little bit blurry, driving at night, you get your cataract fixed,” Tabin said. “That's the most common major surgery by far down in America, in the Western world.”
In medical school, Tabin decided to study ophthalmology, and he eventually made his way back to Nepal, dedicating his life to eradicating preventable blindness in the developing world.
Tabin said Nepali doctors went from 15,000 cataract surgeries a year to 350,000, and eventually care expanded into Bhutan, Tibet and northern India.
Tabin also said that 85% of blindness on Earth either could be prevented or treated, and almost half of this number could have perfect vision restored with cataract surgery.
“I watched modern cataract surgery done, and it was just crazy,” he said. “People just blossomed back to life, and I'd never really seen a miracle like that.”
Despite losing USAID funding, Tabin is still working on expanding the Cure Blindness Project into Africa.
