Is there a better way to start a year than with acts of generosity?
Recently, I learned about the Seva Foundation, which counts Larry Brilliant, Ram Dass and Steve Jobs among its founders. The foundation's mission is to "build sustainable eye care systems worldwide by creating equitable access to eye care, building capacity of new and existing eye hospitals and systems, and collecting and learning from evidence."
I perused their website, and was taken aback by how common it is in many parts of the world for scores of people to suffer from vision impairment due to cataracts - a condition that can be easily cured with a simple surgery that costs 50$ to carry out.
It is a powerful reminder of the stark inequalities that exist in the world. I feel grateful that there are people like the Seva Foundation, who are doing something about it.
You can learn more about the foundation and donate to the cause at:
P.S. I am not affiliated with the Seva Foundation, I just found them to be a genuinely great organization and wanted to spread the word.
https://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/ca...
Givewell agrees with the $50 figure.
"[W]e suppose that a program costs $5 per person screened, that 20% of those screened receive cataract surgery at a cost of $15 for transportation and $25 for the direct cost of surgery, that 10% of those who receive surgery are blind or severely visually impaired, and that surgery is 100% effective. This program spends $650 per blindness or severe visual impairment reversed. We are highly uncertain about how close these estimated values are to the true costs and uptake of programs."
Is there something I (we) are missing here?
This is wrong. idk anyone who believes this
https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/the_benefit_of_daylight_for_ou...
Early on they started with a simple GoFundMe-like approach and have since shifted focus to the monthly model that gives them more leeway to prioritize healthcare needs, but overall exceptionally well run:
UK based Sight Savers * -https://www.sightsavers.org/
And in Australia the Fred Hollows Foundation -https://www.hollows.org/au/home
(I am not affiliated to sight savers but am vaguely related to the founders)
There is another interesting one https://www.onedollarglasses.org/ I like their approach of teaching people how to measure eye sights and build glasses. So it becomes a local self sustainable business.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layton_Rahmatullah_Benevolent_...
Both my parents, of old age, have cataracts. My mother can't see a thing with his right eye; my father is almost in the same condition. Without social security the operation would cost millions (COP$) that I can't afford.
Whereas with social security it would be almost for free. But they've hold my mother from the operation _since before the pandemic_ for all sorts of excuses - no turns, the pandemic itself, and now it's that they will put an internal lens in her eye but it hasn't arrived from where they get from (USA?). Literally last year went calling and going to the hospital asking if they would be operating her soon, but the answer is always the same. It's so tiring for me, imagine for them.
https://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/ca...
> I pay $1 to have an eye test. I can come two more times in the next three months and I will not be charged. I first do a glaucoma test, and then I am tested for vision, and then examined for a detailed uveitis test an eye disease which I suffered in my youth ... The hospital is spanking clean. Everyday it sees 1200 patients and the doctors perform over 200 operations. But then this is only the beginning of an amazing story. It is part of a network of eye hospitals that has seen 32 million patients in 36 years, and performed more than 4 million eye surgeries most of them ultra-subsidized or free.
> Here, the patient has the choice to decide whether to pay or not. In a country where a huge majority of people live on less than $2 a day he ripped of the price tag for access to world class quality eye care ... Today the Aravind Eye Care System is the largest provider of eye surgeries in the world. They see more than three million patients and perform over 300,000 surgeries a year. That is almost 7 percent of the global total. And their record of proficiency is better than that of the UK health care system.
Source: An Infinite Vision: The Story of Aravind Eye Hospital - https://www.huffpost.com/entry/an-infinite-vision-the-st_b_1...
> Using a highly efficient surgical model and variable pricing, this hospital chain has reduced cataract blindness in Tamil Nadu, India, by more than 50 percent and serves all patients regardless of ability to pay.
> Forty years ago, blindness caused primarily by cataracts was widespread in India, rendering almost 13 million people unable to see, even though the condition was relatively easy to correct surgically ... From its modest start with 11 beds, Aravind has grown to perform more than 250,000 cataract surgeries a year. And the rate of cataract blindness in Tamil Nadu has been cut roughly in half.
> Aravind's business model worked because it developed a radically efficient surgical model, with each surgeon performing an average of 2,000 surgeries per year, compared to 300 annually elsewhere in India. Plus it still maintained the dignity of patients while continuing to deliver world-class surgical quality. For example, Aravind's rate of complications is half that of the United Kingdom's National Health Service ... In 1992, it built a manufacturing facility to make its own intraocular lenses, a key element of modern cataract surgery—driving down the cost per lens from about $70 to $2.
Here's there latest Activity Report for 2020-21: https://aravind.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Activity-Repo...
327,786 surgeries in 2020-21 breaking down as:
108,619 subsidized (walkins to free hospital)
14,934 free (through screening camps)
204,233 paid
37.7% of their surgeries at 0 or very low costs.
It is an amazing model.
