On Saturday, November 15, 2016, during Duke University Medical School's Medical Alumni weekend, Duke Eye Center was honored to have alumnus Juan Batlle, MD as our guest speaker for Medical Alumni Grand Rounds to present "30 Years in Ophthalmology of a Duke Graduate.”
Dr. Battle received the 2016 Duke Distinguished Medical Alumni Humanitarian Award. He is currently Professor of Ophthalmology at the Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo, and has been the Chief of the Ophthalmology Service for 25 years at the Elias Santana Hospital, where donates his time one day of the week to help the poor people and to train and teach ophthalmology residents.
Dr. Juan Francisco Batlle was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Since an early age, he demonstrated interest in medicine and ophthalmology. He attended the school of medicine at Duke University in North Carolina. Dr. Batlle graduated Summa Cum Laude from Duke University and was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Omega Alpha academic fraternities at Duke.
At the end of his internship at Duke University, he was accepted by Dr. Edward W.D. Norton in the residency training program in ophthalmology at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute of the University of Miami. During his years of training, he excelled as a student of ophthalmology, and was later invited to become Chief Resident at the Institute in the year 1984. While at the Bascom Palmer, he pursued fellowship training in three sub-specialties: Retina-vitreous, pediatric ophthalmology and neurophthalmology. He came back to Santo Domingo and founded a social assistance center for the poor and he also joined his father´s practice in ophthalmology. The hospital was named the Elias Santana Hospital, better known as “Los Americanos”. At this charity clinic, Dr. Batlle also created a residency training program in ophthalmology that has already graduated 120 residents and more than 200 ophthalmic technicians. He also founded Centro Laser, where he created a multi-specialty practice with special emphasis in cataract and refractive surgery, and vitreoretinal surgery.
He is a very well-known and respected doctor in ophthalmic societies and organizations, both national as well as international, like the Cornea Bank of the Dominican Republic, the National Committee for the Prevention of Blindness, and Vision 20/20, the latter one engaged in prevention projects to avoid curable blindness in Latin America.
One of his most ambitious projects has been the National Blindness perfumed in the Dominican Republic in the year 1995, and later the RAAR´S in the year 2008. He participated and directed the clinical trial of the OptiMedica Company to develop the femtosecond laser for cataract surgery, and was a pioneer in the application of amniotic membrane as a source of tissue for conjunctiva replacement in the year 1992.
Since October 2012, Dr. Juan Batlle is the Chairman of VISION2020/IAPB for Latin America.