The Fred Hollows Foundation, together with partners, contributed to eye operations, treatments and procedures that benefited over 8 million people in 2012.
 

Over 8 million people helped

“Professor Fred Hollows would expect us to keep raising the bar and that’s exactly what we did in 2012,” said The Foundation’s CEO Brian Doolan.

“In a watershed year, we went from counting our sight saving interventions in the hundreds of thousands to counting them in the millions.”

“During the period, 404,915 patients were treated for cataract and other eye conditions, up from 282,714 in the previous year.

“A record 40,719 medical and support staff were trained and 98 facilities were built or upgraded.

“We also treated 7.6 million people for trachoma with our partners in a new global initiative.”

Trachoma is the leading infectious cause of blindness and accounts for about 4 per cent of all avoidable blindness. The infection and its transmission can be reduced with surgery, antibiotics, facial cleanliness and environmental change, which is known as the S.A.F.E strategy.

“I think Fred would be thrilled with this result because he invested his heart and soul in drawing attention to and treating the scourge of trachoma in Australia’s Indigenous communities,” said Doolan.

“Thanks to the record support of Australian donors we are well on the way to achieving Fred’s dream of a world where no one is needlessly blind.”

The Foundation was this year ranked in the top 50 best non-government organisations in the world by The Global Journal for our role in reducing the cost of cataract surgery and commitment to training local staff.