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December 16, 2025
4 min read
There is a tremendous unmet need for eye care in the world.
According to WHO, more than 2 billion of the world’s 8 billion people have significant vision impairment or blindness, with 1 billion having a treatable condition. It was interesting to me that 800 million have uncorrected refractive errors with no access to spectacles, including nearly 11 million here in the U.S. There are many virtuous programs available for recycling used eyeglasses, including those supported by large optical chains and Lions Clubs International. Our group at Minnesota Eye Consultants has worked with ReSpectacle. If interested, contact information is available on the internet.
The untreated global causes of moderate to severe vision loss that might respond to anterior segment eye surgery include 85 million with cataract, another 80 million with glaucoma and more than 12 million with corneal blindness. For the well-trained ophthalmic surgeon, there is no shortage of opportunities to serve patients in need at home or abroad.
In the U.S., there are several mission eye surgery projects one can join. At Minnesota Eye Consultants, we initiated a free eye surgery program for the underserved in our region 35 years ago. Since its founding in 2014, we have collaborated with the ASCRS Foundation’s Operation Sight program, offering no-charge cataract, glaucoma and corneal surgery along with procedures such as collagen cross-linking twice yearly and as needed in urgent cases. For the interested U.S. surgeon or ophthalmology group, contact information for Operation Sight is also available on the internet. There are several other good programs including Mission Cataract USA.
For the surgeon interested in mission eye surgery programs outside the U.S., there are several worthy opportunities. The Global Sight Alliance mission finder, Medical Missions Foundation, SEE International, Cure Blindness Project and Project Orbis, along with the American Academy of Ophthalmology and the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, are all good places to start your search.
A few personal thoughts. I completed my residency and 2 years of fellowship training in cornea and glaucoma in summer 1978. In both 1978 and 1979, I accompanied my then-senior eye surgeon partner in Dallas, William S. Harris, MD, and a few other ophthalmologists on mission cataract surgery trips to San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Our practice and Alcon financed these 1-week trips, and we collaborated with the San Pedro Sula Lions Club, which served as our host and helped identify patients in need. We worked 12-hour days for 6 days in a row performing both phacoemulsification and planned extracapsular cataract extraction surgery with posterior chamber lens implants. We clearly touched many lives in a positive way, and while I found the experience exhilarating and rewarding, I felt something was missing. After some introspection, for me the missing element was no interaction with the local Honduran ophthalmology community.
In 1980, I left Dallas and joined the ophthalmology faculty at the University of Minnesota as director of the cornea service and chief of ophthalmology at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center. My research on corneal preservation led to the development of Optisol-GS, prolonging corneal preservation to 14 days, which allowed transplantable donor corneas to be shared globally. This prompted David Paton, MD, to request my help introducing eye banking and corneal transplant surgery to the just created Project Orbis, a different kind of mission eye surgery program that provided advanced surgical eye care to patients in need but had as its primary focus surgical skills transfer to the visited countries’ eye surgeons and support staff. I found my first Project Orbis trip to Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1982 fulfilling in every way. We established a sustainable source of quality corneal tissue for Project Orbis surgery while sharing knowledge and performing surgery with Sri Lankan eye surgeons. Side by side in the Project Orbis airplane, a Sri Lankan eye surgeon and I would select appropriate patients and then plan and perform surgery. We performed complex and routine cataract, glaucoma and corneal surgery. While we positively impacted many individual lives, it was even more rewarding to me that we made a sustainable difference in the country’s eye care by working closely with the local eye care community and government agencies.
Since 1982, Project Orbis has helped educate more than 325,000 eye surgeons and their support staff in 82 countries, an extraordinary accomplishment. In following years, I made additional trips with the Project Orbis team and encouraged my partners, fellows and colleagues to participate in this laudable program that continues to serve global ophthalmology.
After my Project Orbis experience, I was blessed to participate in many other mission eye surgery trips but only when both patient care and an educational mission were included.
One final thought: Along with adding education of the local eye care community on a mission eye surgery trip, I also learned over time that returning on a regular basis to the same location can magnify one’s impact. As one example, 5 years ago, Minnesota Eye Consultants (MEC) in partnership with Vance Thompson Vision (VTV), Kevin Waltz, MD, John Vukich, MD, Russell Swan, MD, and three of my former fellows, Patricia Sierra, MD, (who was born in Honduras), John Berdahl, MD, and Mark Hansen, MD, along with an extraordinarily talented local eye surgeon, Marco Robles, MD, adopted the ophthalmology resident and fellowship training program at Hospital General San Felipe in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. This team of world-class eye surgeons and the current MEC and VTV fellows returns once or twice every year and work with the local San Felipe hospital ophthalmology faculty, residents and fellows sharing knowledge, examining patients, and operating side by side performing complex and routine eye surgery. In addition to sharing advanced surgical skills, this program has, with the generous help of several U.S. ophthalmology companies, also made a meaningful improvement in this region’s only ophthalmology training program’s office and surgery suite equipment, positively impacting the quality of patient care and training available every day.
There are many rewarding ways to serve and make a difference as an ophthalmologist close to home and/or abroad. For the interested surgeon, I encourage thoughtful introspection regarding your personal goals. Do you want to provide patient service, education or both? Do you want to travel the world and experience many different countries and cultures, or do you want to commit to a single location and return regularly? A good place to start is to review the websites of the established programs listed above and then speak to surgeons who have participated with each of them on a regular basis.
The unique experience available as a missionary eye surgeon serving others can have a profound impact on one’s own self-esteem and view of the world and is especially memorable if you share the experience with family and close colleagues.
For me, sharing knowledge and surgical skills with eye surgeons around the world has been memorable and extremely rewarding. The paradox of giving remains a powerful truth: The more we give, the more we receive.
For more information:
Richard L. Lindstrom, MD, can be reached at rllindstrom@mneye.com.
Sources/Disclosures
Source:
Expert Submission
Disclosures:
Lindstrom reports being past president of ASCRS, past chair of the ASCRS Foundation, founder and surgeon emeritus of Minnesota Eye Consultants and Unifeye Vision Partners, and attending surgeon of Project Orbis.
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