38: Cure Blindness with Dr. Geoff Tabin
Dr. Geoff Tabin is a professor at Stanford University and is on a mission to eradicate unnecessary blindness from all corners of the globe. This Doctor of Ophthalmology co-founded the Cure Blindness Project which began in the Himalayan region and has restored vision to over 625,000 people worldwide. Dr. Tabin is also the fourth person in the world to summit the tallest peak on all seven continents. In this episode:
- Getting through Yale (undergrad), Oxford (master’s), and Harvard (doctorate) all in one piece
- Using grant money as a graduate student to climb the most difficult side of Mount Everest
- The journey to climb the tallest peak on all seven continents
- How a passion for climbing fueled a newfound passion for medicine and healthcare in third world countries
- Partnering with Dr. Sanduk Ruit in 1995 with one mission – eliminate all blindness in the Himalayan Region
- How blindness decreases life expectancy by 33%
- What is a cataract?
- Reverse engineering a process to create biomedical sustainability with limited resources
- Dropping the price of a cataract surgery from $200 to $25
- Juggling many responsibilities by handling them one step at a time
- Creating local economic models for all members of the socioeconomic classes
- Curing the world from blindness
You can find more information on Dr. Tabin and Dr. Ruit at www.cureblindness.org. You can purchase Dr. Tabin’s book “Blind Corners” on Amazon and you can read about this project in “Second Suns” by David Oliver Relin.
