WHO IS FRED? The late Professor Fred Hollows was a renowned Australian eye surgeon who got things done. He believed that no matter where someone lived or how rich or poor they were they deserved the same access to eye care. Fred always pushed for change and challenged the established way of doing things. As a committed justice warrior, he put in motion a legacy to end avoidable blindness. In his time as a humanitarian and eye surgeon, Fred helped restore eyesight to thousands of people around the world.
WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? Poor vision is considered the world’s largest unaddressed health issue — and it affects more than a third of us. Globally 36 million people are blind and about 1.3 billion live with some form of vision impairment. Almost 90 per cent of those people live in low and middle income countries. Yet 4 out of 5 people who are blind don’t need to be. Without urgent action the number of people who are blind will triple to more than 115 million over the next 30 years.
KEY BARRIERS: Lack of awareness about eye health and services Limited and inefficient eye care models Insufficient and under-utilized eye care infrastructure High cost and low quality outcomes
THE COST: Avoidable blindness and vision impairment have a significant impact on both social and economic status. Vision impairment costs the world $3 trillion every year and is the second highest risk factor for learning difficulties which impact a person’s chance to get a good education, find a job and build a better future. 55% of the world’s blind are women, making this squarely a gender equity issue. Most eye health treatments are highly cost-effective. For every $1 invested in eye health there is a $4 return to the community and the economy.
THE SOLUTION The Fred Hollows Foundation has a very clear goal: putting an end to avoidable blindness. Globally 4 out of 5 people with blindness or vision impairment can be helped. There are effective interventions available to prevent and treat eye diseases. The Fred Hollows Foundation, one of the world’s largest and most innovative eye health development organizations, is tackling the issue of avoidable blindness with a number of large scale, transformative interventions designed to restore sight to millions. More than 25 years ago we set up the first high-quality, low-cost intraocular lens (IOL) factories in Eritrea and Nepal that lowered the cost of the lenses from more than $150 to about $5, disrupting the IOL market and making cataract surgery accessible to some of the poorest and most marginalized people in the world. We led the way on establishing the Cameroon Cataract Bond, a new way of funding eye healthcare. The Foundation is a lead investor in a social enterprise that builds cataract surgical centers. We conducted the largest trachoma elimination project in the world in 2017 in Ethiopia, supporting 1 in 5 surgeries and 1 in 5 doses of antibiotics globally.