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The Problem: Preventable & Curable Blindness
The scope of worldwide blindness is daunting.
According to figures from the World Health Organization there are 39 million blind individuals worldwide and 285 million with some form of visual impairment. Ninety percent of them live in poverty in the developing world. Up to 60 percent of blind children die within one year, and a blind adult will only live two-thirds as long as sighted peers.
Four out of every five blind people could be cured at any modern eye clinic, but those in developing nations lack access to modern eye care—sometimes due to expense, but most often because there aren’t enough doctors. While the United States has 61 ophthalmologists per million people, most developing countries have only one or two per million.
The economic impact of blindness is staggering: for every blind person, 2.5 individuals are lost from the workforce as others must stop work or school to care for their vision-impaired relatives. Lost productivity adds up to $2.7 trillion each year.
Learn more about the scope of worldwide blindness in this short video:
The John A. Moran Eye Center is a proud member of the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness.
Our Solution: Train More Doctors
The Moran Eye Center trains doctors, nurses, and other eye care professionals in more than 25 countries. We bring the most promising international surgeons to Utah for intensive training and send our own American residents abroad.
At medical camps in the field, Moran surgeons restore sight to hundreds of patients in a single week, while also helping local trainees gain experience.
In Utah, we provide charitable care to thousands of individuals without adequate access to care. Our local outreach work is focused primarily on Salt Lake and Summit counties, as well as on the Navajo Nation in southern Utah. Learn more about our work around the world in the map below.
International Outreach
Contact Us
Director
Medical Missions
Education Initiatives
erika.ruiz@hsc.utah.edu