Botswana, north of South Africa, is a country in rapid economic development. 70% of its surface is part of the Kalahari Desert, so the population density is really low. It barely has 2.6 million inhabitants. Despite the growth dynamics of recent years, the shortcomings are enormous. For example, there are only seven ophthalmologists in the country. An expedition from the Elena Barraquer Foundation visited Botswana for the first time this year as part of its program focused on cataract operations. “Do you know how long it had been since I could walk alone?” commented one patient after the intervention.
In developing countries, four out of five blind people may not be blind, and cataracts are the leading cause of blindness in the world. The Elena Barraquer Foundation organizes expeditions to remote places, essentially in Latin America and Africa, to perform cataract surgeries with the aim of restoring sight. In six years of existence, the organization has grown exponentially, as witnessed by the data for the 2023 financial year: 6,937 cataract operations carried out in 19 surgical expeditions to 17 countries, with 184 volunteers and more than 200,000 km traveled. In addition, the entity has carried out more than 16,492 medical consultations, delivered 8,000 sunglasses and 8 tons of medical supplies. The benefits of these expeditions affect 52,240 people, because it is not only the sick who benefit from recovering their vision. “You are also helping everyone around you. If the person can see, those who have to take care of them will be able to dedicate themselves to their activities, and in many cases these people are girls who cannot go to school because they have to take care of their elders,” explains the director of the foundation, Tete. Ferreiro.
The entity is nourished by the contributions of individual members and companies, which make donations of both financial and medical supplies. Elena’s Shop (Calaf, 3, Barcelona) is a small charity shop whose profits go to financing the expeditions. For next year, 22 assistance campaigns are already scheduled. By 2025, objectives are set such as operating uninterruptedly for 24 hours in Colombia, with the collaboration of local specialists.
According to the WHO, there are 40 million blind people in the world, of whom 19 million can regain vision with cataract surgery, a surgery that in many cases can last between 10 and 30 minutes. “It is one of the operations that leaves the most profitability per euro invested in a country,” says Ferreiro. Although in developed countries it is a very simple intervention and a pathology that is detected very early, in areas with poor access to healthcare, cataracts reach the size of a lentil. Those affected completely lose their vision.
The Elena Barraquer Foundation, which has accumulated 19,370 operations, has developed a mobile operating room logistics system that allows large surgical volumes to be achieved while maintaining safety and quality standards for the patient. Each basic team is made up of a surgeon, scrub nurse, anesthetist, ophthalmologist and field assistants, all volunteers: more than a hundred doctors have worked altruistically with the foundation. In each expedition, surgeries are performed for five days, another two days are for travel and assembly of the infrastructure and another two are for disassembly and return. A team with two surgeons operates on an average of 400 patients in five days. The five teams that participated this year in an expedition to El Salvador operated on more than a thousand people.
One of the rules is that an ophthalmologist cannot perform operations on his first expedition because the pace is frenetic and the situation is exceptional. In his debut he will visit patients before and after interventions. Another rule of the organization is that only one eye is operated on, even if both are affected, so that the maximum number of patients can recover their vision. The teams always go and come back together. There is hardly time for sightseeing. The volunteers pay for the flights themselves, but at the destination it is a local organization that is responsible for paying the costs of transportation, food and accommodation. “Alcoholic beverages not included except for small exceptions,” the foundation states.
Ophthalmologist David Berrones made his debut this year on an expedition to Cape Verde (Africa): “The fact of being able to put a small part of yourself for a larger cause fills the soul and recharges the batteries. “I couldn’t be more grateful to the FEB for giving me one of the best experiences of my life, as well as new friendships that I know are here to stay.”
