‘I WISH HE COULD SEE US NOW’

Fred’s widow Gabi is dedicated to continuing his life’s work

Fred Hollows was dying, and he knew it. Desperately ill in hospital, there seemed little hope that he could complete his last eye surgery mission in Vietnam. Yet not even cancer could stop gruff, stubborn, endlessly compassionate Fred once he made up his mind.

Determined to get to Hanoi as promised, he took drastic action. “He just tore the tracheotomy tube out of his throat and discharged himself from hospital,” recalls his widow Gabi, 69, still in awe of his courage and commitment. “Fred was very sick then, so everything was pretty raw, but none of us thought he would pass away a few months later.”

The enduring image of that final trip features Fred examining the eyes of eight-year-old boy Tran Van Giap, whose sight was saved by a simple operation the following day.

Thirty years later, as the Fred Hollows Foundation celebrates its anniversary, the “bittersweet but beautiful” photograph remains central to its crusade – to end avoidable blindness.

FRED’S LEGACY

Since the charity was established on September 3, 1992, it has restored the sight of more than 3 million people globally and delivered more than 200 million doses of antibiotics for trachoma.

“It’s a wonderful, magnificent, amazing kind of story,” smiles Gabi, a National Living Treasure, who has worked tirelessly for the foundation since Fred’s too-early death, aged only 63, in 1993.