HelpMeSee is a US-based, international nonprofit making great strides every year toward our goal of eliminating the backlog of cataract-caused blindness and vision impairment. More than 100 million people suffer from cataracts, 20 million bilaterally blind, 90 percent of them living in the developing countries in Asia, Africa and South America where we work. In these countries there may be just one ophthalmologist per million residents … or none.
In just the past six years, working with more than 300 surgery partners whom we have trained in live surgery and with our courseware, as well as trained community health professionals, HelpMeSee has developed standards and tools for cataract surgery that ensure maximum patient safety and successful outcomes. This has resulted in sight-restoring operations for more than 250,000 people, often in impoverished, rural locations, who had otherwise no hope.
At present, HelpMeSee is well on our way to developing a unique, virtual-reality, cataract-surgery simulator with which we expect to train 30,000 surgery specialists by 2030 to perform this life-restoring, low-risk, low-cost operation.
How Are We Different?
Sustainability
Locally sustainable health solutions are at the center of our campaign, and the only way to provide the ongoing care needed to end cataract blindness is by increasing the number of local specialists. That’s why we place an emphasis on training and empowering local partners.
Scale
We have worked closely with medical professionals on the ground to standardize the quality of care, the medical supply chain and evaluation practices to create a replicable model for eye care worldwide. Thanks in part to the revolution in mobile and cloud-based technologies, we can deploy our outreach and monitoring tools to partners in any part of the world and see results in real time.
Integration
The challenges to end cataract blindness are numerous – too few surgeons, low patient awareness, limited access to quality instruments and facilities, etc. So HelpMeSee focuses on a comprehensive solution to cataract blindness, one which includes surgical training, patient outreach, and support for sight-restoring cataract procedures. Our technology-driven solutions are built address all dimensions of this global health crisis.