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In 1979, a volunteer ophthalmologist from Negros Occidental, in the
person of Dr. Fortunato Eusebio, went to Gujarat, India with Rotary
International (RI) to work in surgical eye camps.
He was so inspired
that he shared the idea with his friends in the Rotary Club of Bacolod
North (RCBN), RI District 3850 of doing volume cataract surgery not
eye camp style but in a hospital. He convinced them to start a project
called “Sight Savers” with the aim of doing 50-60 cataract surgeries
in one year.
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Each year the club raised funds specifically for this project.
The patients were accommodated in school classrooms, which were
converted to dormitories during the vacations and ferried to the
hospital for surgery. |
This involved the services of many club
members, and wives of the Rotarians, to see that the meals and
transportation of the patients and their ‘watchers’ were well served
and well coordinated. There was great camaraderie and celebration but
it was not cost-effective and the project was only reaching out to a
maximum of 60 patients per year because of fund constraints of the
Rotary Club.
Then something great happened. “Old men dream dreams and young men see
visions”. In 1992, Dr. Fortunato Eusebio and Jack Po, with the same
mission and vision to reach out to many more cataract patients got
together a group of like-minded individuals and formed the Cataract
Foundation Philippines, Inc. (CFPI).
Jack Po at that time was anxious
to expand the prevention of blindness program to reach out to more
than just 50 beneficiaries but the club did not have the appropriate
level of resources to respond. He became the president up to the
present.
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