Page 14 - True Stories

We reach out to the world.
Within 12 hours of the massive earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010, leaving a quarter of a million people dead, the
first medical team of foreign physicians arrived at a makeshift field hospital at the Port-au-Prince airport. Weeks later, a young optometrist joined the effort. From a tent pitched on a small runway, he screened hundreds of destitute survivors who were at risk of ocular infections. One patient, a young man, had developed severe bacterial conjunctivitis, which the optometrist quickly treated. Left undiagnosed,
this simple infection could have led to blindness—compounding the tragedy for a victim who had already undergone reconstructive surgery after his eye and facial bones were partially crushed in the earthquake.
MISSION TRIPS. Through humanitarian initiatives around the world, optometrists are often the most in-demand medical volunteers, offering both skills in primary care and expertise in eye disorders to fragile communities with limited access to health care.
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