Andean Medical Mission by Dave Goldsmith (Cooden Beach Hotel)

The Andean Medical Mission carries out sight saving eye surgery and is committed to helping Bolivian doctors by providing training and equipment.

Did you know that as much as 80% of blindness in Latin Americans over the age of 50 is either preventable or can be cured?

AMM's vision is to help build eye care services for rural regions of the Andes and Amazon, which, whilst remote, are sustainable and can be relied upon to deliver high standards of care. AMM see it as a joint UK and Bolivian project where Bolivian ophthalmologists, British ophthalmologists, local hospitals and clinics, town officials and the patients themselves all work together to make unnecessary blindness a thing of the past.

Over the last five years AMM have screened over 3,000 patients. Many of these have needed surgery and they have carried out over 500 operations to prevent blindness or to return some vision to people that were blind. Being a blind person anywhere is difficult, but it is particularly hard in the Amazon. There are so many obsticles and dangers at every turn. There are snakes and buting insects, trip hazards and rivers with danger all around. It is a very hard place for them to work but a very nessesary one. There are about 130 main towns and villages in the El Beni and Pando region of Bolivia that need help and many more small communities not yet on a map. AMM have so much work to do to ultimately reach all these people and eliminate avoidable blindness in the region.

AMM is working with the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness as well as the Bolivian Ophthalmology Society. AMM publish the results of their work so that other ophthalmologists working in similar remote regions of Latin America can benefit from what their learnings. AMM always look forward to providing lectures to the ophthalmic society and with local doctors and vision groups such as the newly formed Glaucoma Society of Bolivia.

AMM also provide glasses and have their own glasses making equipment as well as many ready readers which have been provided by the UK Lions.

All AMM services are provided for free. They don’t charge for training, surgery and the team travel at their own cost. Every penny raised goes on medicines and consumables for surgery and building the eye care service that this area needs so badly.

For further information, please visit http://www.andeanmedicalmission.co.uk/