In the Amazon region of Colombia, along the Peruvian and Brazilian border, there are now around 2,700 more bespectacled people than there were a few weeks ago.
In January of 2013 Florida doctor Carey Rowan was among a team of over 65 surgeons, nurses, and volunteers who flew into the city of Leticia in the Colombian jungle and over a two-week period improved the sight of over 600 patients a day.
In just two weeks, around 2,700 pairs of glasses were given out. These glasses are donated in the United States and collected and marked with the prescription. “The glasses may not be perfect but they’re close,” said the surgeon.
“I was doing the surgery part in this little hospital. It was all sanitized, but like they do it in Russia with three surgeons operating in the same room and two assistants each,” said Rowan. “The patients can’t see the [faces of the] people who helped them come to the surgery, but the following day we take off the patch and they can see things they haven’t seen for five or ten years. It’s really beautiful,” said the doctor. According to Rowan, several hundred surgeries were carried out over a 12-day period.
In the U.S. cataract surgery takes 7–9 minutes with a special machine. In Leticia, there was no machine so the operation took around 20 minutes, however the surgeons still managed to complete 25 to 30 operations a day.