Bidya Pant, M.D., remembers the moment he wanted to become an eye surgeon. He saw a hospital in Nepal turn away a blind man needing cataract surgery because it didn’t have resident eye surgeons, only outsiders who visited on medical tours or missions.
Pant went on to become one of the first partner surgeons for HelpMeSee, a nonprofit organization seeking to end treatable blindness worldwide. Since 2011, he’s performed more than 130,000 eye surgeries and opened six eye centers in South Asia.
But even Pant’s remarkable productivity has barely dented the need for accessible eye surgery. Globally, nearly 43 million people are blind due to conditions that could be fixed through procedures like catacact surgery.
“The main priority in countries isn’t eye care but malaria, cholera and other life-threatening diseases,” Pant said at a recent DGHI event. “We need to change our prospective about blindness.”
Pant joined other leaders in eye surgery at a DGHI Think Global event on Sept. 26 on preventable blindness. The talk, co-hosted by the DukeGlobal Ophthalmology Program and moderated by Lloyd Williams, M.D., Ph.D., a Duke eye surgeon and DGHI affiliate, underscored the significant socioeconomic and health benefits that could come from increasing global access to eye care and eye surgeries.