Eyesight for the blind was once a messianic promise. This week, assembly-line cataract surgeries will restore the vision of 1,200 Ethiopians over eight days, courtesy of Waterbury's Himalayan Cataract Project. The work qualifies as a miraculous undertaking, asserted ophthalmologist Geoff Tabin. "We're restoring not just sight, but life," he said. In 1994, eye doctors Tabin and Sanduk Ruit established a small clinic to perform low-cost cataract surgeries in Kathmandu, Nepal. More than two decades and 567,000 eye operations later, HCP is strategizing ways to take on a challenge of near biblical proportions: to restore sight to 18 million people with curable blindness around the globe. On Monday, Tabin and a team of local doctors set up shop in Mekelle in northern Ethiopia, where patients had gathered from around the region. In one sugergery after another, Vermont-trained Tabin will inject a local anesthetic and cut a tiny, self-sealing incision in the eye wall. He'll remove the cataract, easing out the hard protein deposits that have formed behind the iris, insert a clear plastic intraocular lens and bandage the eye. The surgery, which costs $25 per eye, lasts all of seven minutes. Not surprisingly, the pair of eye doctors operating in far-flung locales has attracted plenty of media attention. Over the decades, their Himalayan Cataract Project has been featured in a slew of national and international publications. A "60 Minutes" segment is scheduled to air before the end of the year. The coverage has focused on the uncompromising dedication of the founders: Tabin and Ruit perfected a simple surgical procedure and brought it to more than 6.6 million patients in a dozen countries in Asia and Africa. They send out community workers to round up the afflicted and guarantee treatment regardless of a patient's ability to pay. The post-op footage is pretty compelling, too. In a video from an Ethiopian clinic, delight borders on hysteria as nurses strip eye bandages from the faces of hundreds of patients, one by one. They blink, dazed, at their first glimpses of sunlight in years. Patients whoop and clap, embrace loved ones, and throw their arms around the nurses. "It's pure joy, the singing, dancing, crying," said Job Heintz, CEO of the organization. He contends that the procedure is "definitely the most cost-effective surgery" in the world. On the day after, 80 percent of patients can see well enough to pass an American driver's…
Eyesight for the blind was once a messianic promise. This week, assembly-line cataract surgeries will restore the vision of 1,200 Ethiopians over eight days, courtesy of Waterbury's Himalayan Cataract Project. The work qualifies as a miraculous undertaking, asserted ophthalmologist Geoff Tabin. "We're restoring not just sight, but life," he said. In 1994, eye doctors Tabin and Sanduk Ruit established a small clinic to perform low-cost cataract surgeries in Kathmandu, Nepal. More than two decades and 567,000 eye operations later, HCP is strategizing ways to take on a challenge of near biblical proportions: to restore sight to 18 million people with curable blindness around the globe. On Monday, Tabin and a team of local doctors set up shop in Mekelle in northern Ethiopia, where patients had gathered from around the region. In one sugergery after another, Vermont-trained Tabin will inject a local anesthetic and cut a tiny, self-sealing incision in the eye wall. He'll remove the cataract, easing out the hard protein deposits that have formed behind the iris, insert a clear plastic intraocular lens and bandage the eye. The surgery, which costs $25 per eye, lasts all of seven minutes. Not surprisingly, the pair of eye doctors operating in far-flung locales has attracted plenty of media attention. Over the decades, their Himalayan Cataract Project has been featured in a slew of national and international publications. A "60 Minutes" segment is scheduled to air before the end of the year. The coverage has focused on the uncompromising dedication of the founders: Tabin and Ruit perfected a simple surgical procedure and brought it to more than 6.6 million patients in a dozen countries in Asia and Africa. They send out community workers to round up the afflicted and guarantee treatment regardless of a patient's ability to pay. The post-op footage is pretty compelling, too. In a video from an Ethiopian clinic, delight borders on hysteria as nurses strip eye bandages from the faces of hundreds of patients, one by one. They blink, dazed, at their first glimpses of sunlight in years. Patients whoop and clap, embrace loved ones, and throw their arms around the nurses. "It's pure joy, the singing, dancing, crying," said Job Heintz, CEO of the organization. He contends that the procedure is "definitely the most cost-effective surgery" in the world. On the day after, 80 percent of patients can see well enough to pass an American driver's…