Sunday Monday of Jos, Nigeria. Sight restored with tissue from SightLife.
SightLife partners in international outreach:
SightLife's international mission: establish eye
banks overseas and provide technical training
Over 10 million children and adults worldwide suffer from corneal blindness. Five hundred thousand children become blind each year, and 50 percent of them will die in 1-2 years.
Yet cornea blindness is curable. Through cornea transplantation, the medical technology needed to restore vision to most of these people exists, and is routinely available in the United States. Unfortunately, the capacity of properly trained individuals around the globe does not come close to meeting the need. SightLife is working to change this. We currently provide cornea tissue, technical training, and hands-on guidance to doctors and health officials working to start eye banks in these locations:
| • Hanoi, Vietnam | • Gansu Province, China |
| • Kigali, Rwanda | • Lusaka, Zambia |
| • Jos, Nigeria | • Nairobi, Kenya |
√ Hyderabad, India |
|
The Ramayamma International Eye Bank in Hyderabad has become the success story we seek to duplicate in other developing countries. When our SightLife eye bank joined with others on this project, experts had declared eye banking impossible for developing countries. The experts were wrong. The Hyderabad eye bank is now one of the most successful eye banks in the world, expecting to perform 1,400 corneal transplants this year alone. With hard work and support from those who want to make a real difference, this success can be repeated many times over in countries like those listed above.