HIMALAYAN “GIFT OF SIGHT” EXPEDITION 2018 RETURNS TO NEPAL

Press Release

NEW YORK (Sept. 18, 2018) – A team of leading ophthalmologists will travel to a remote region of Nepal to tend to the eye care needs of over 1,000 remote villagers in Gumghadi, Mugu District of Western Nepal, on the border of Tibet.

The team, assembled by Scott Hamilton, president of Dooley Intermed International, New York, and

Dr. Ronald C. Gentile, will depart in early October on a two-week mission involving members of the elite Operation Restore Sight team. The expedition is focused on providing urgently needed ophthalmic care to villagers in an extremely remote and impoverished region near Rara Lake in the Mugu District, known for being the most remote region in Nepal, and among the least developed.

An advance team from Himalaya Eye Hospital and the Pema Ts’al Sakya Monastic Institute will depart from Pokhara, Nepal in early October on a multi-day four-wheel-drive journey into the Himalayan Mountain range to reach the Mugu District.  The tri-lingual monks have volunteered their services as translators and eye camp assistants. The Dooley-Operation Restore Sight surgical team will then rendezvous via bush plane traveling to the remote 1,500-ft. Talcha airstrip located at 9,000-ft. elevation. From there the team will travel on foot along a mountain trail to Gumghadi Village for the multi-day “eye camp” providing comprehensive eye examinations, refractions, eye glasses, medical care and sight-restoring surgeries.

“All medical care, eyeglasses, medicines and surgeries will be provided completely free of cost to everyone in need,” according to Dr. Gentile. Cataract surgery is one of the most cost-effective and gratifying surgical procedures in medicine since patients are “cured” overnight, often with full restoration of their eyesight.
Ophthalmologists participating in the mission include Chris Teng, MD, Associate Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Science at the Yale School of Medicine; Sanjay Kedhar, MD, Associate Professor of Ophthalmology at the Gavin Herbert Eye Institute, University of California, Irvine; and Omar Ozgur, MD, Oculoplastic Surgeon at Advanced Eye Medical Group, Mission Viejo, Calif. Indira Kairam, MD a Gastroenterologist from New York City, is the expedition physician. Additional team members include Scott Hamilton, COT, the team leader and President of Dooley Intermed; Lars Perkins, a photojournalist, aviator, and technology entrepreneur from Camden, Maine; and Forrest Berkley, the team’s logistics manager from Concord, Mass.

In 2013 and 2017 members of the same team restored sight to more than 150 villagers in Nepal’s remote Lower Mustang and Upper Gorkha regions while providing quality eye care and refractive services to over 1,500 patients. The Dooley Intermed - Operation Restore Sight team also participated in the construction of a new Eye Hospital in the Kavre District of Nepal, a region that suffered massive damage in the 2015 Nepal Earthquake.

Learn more about Dooley Intermed - Operation Restore Sight at: www.dooleyintermed.org

Media contact:

Jeff Blumenfeld

Blumenfeld and Assoc. PR, LLC

203 326 1200; jeff@blumenfeldpr.com