In 5 Minutes, He Lets the Blind See
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
EDIT: So I asked her, it seems the main difference is the new lens they're putting in. With a cateract the lens is clouded and the essence of this procedure is cutting out that lens so that light reaches the retina once more. 30 years back they did not have new lenses to put in though, so (quote) "we would send everyone home with +10 glasses". She also recalls the expeditions into Nepal going into the mountains to operate cateracts 14 consecutive days full time even back then (takes a while to get up to 100.000 I suppose :]).
So it used to be they were getting people who saw nothing to see something. Now they get people who see nothing to see really well, which is of course huge.
>I’m on my annual win-a-trip journey, in which I take a university student with me on a trip to the developing world to cover underreported issues.
Firstly, I don't think this is 'under reported', I've seen at least two full length documentaries about this procedure in Nepal, the project has its own Facebook page [0] and a Google search for 'Nepal cataract' turns up lots of trad media results.
Secondly, if the author has taken a student to cover things, why aren't e reading the student's piece ?
Lastly, the author - like most people who haven't undergone this type of surgery - falls into the trap of breathlessly hailing this as a miraculous cure for blindness. It's not. While the restored sight is absolutely better than having cataracts and will indeed cheer you up in the immediate term, the vision provided by the replacement lenses is a far cry from a person's natural vision, for one thing these lenses have a fixed focus. Another issue is the limited life span - eventually they fur up, but don't go hard like UV induced cataracts - which necessitates replacement or laser surgery.
Humans - particularly the kind that live up mountains in Nepal - are adaptable and can cope, but as someone who has had this surgery (and the follow up laser surgery) it annoys me that reportage routinely fails to mention these kinds of things.
In this particular case, it is also quite peculiar that the author fails to point out that handing out a $5 pair of sunglasses would prevent the cataracts in the first place (these are pretty much all UV induced). Education and prevention in this respect are very much under reported.
I've also heard that vitamin sufficiency prevents UV induced cataracts, is this true and on what scale would vitamins be sufficient? Introducing a particular crop with the particular vitamin to the local farmers, potentially a GMO crop, or selling supplements or adding vitamins to food (e.g. in the Netherlands I know virtually all bread has government-encouraged iodine to prevent iodine deficiency illnesses and effects, not sure if it's a worldwide standard, but iodising table salt is common practice for the majority of the world, too) might be a practical alternative.
[1] http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/42710/InTech-The_history_of_c...
The Fred Hollows Foundation has been doing this since at least 1992 around the world including Nepal where Dr. Hollows and Dr. Ruit worked closely together.
Unfortunately Dr. Hollows passed away years ago but the foundation continues his work.