Eyes On The World

Watching a Simple Surgery Transform Lives Inspired Professor Tin Aung to Help Improve the Sight of Millions Around the World.

- Wendy Kay

Tin Aung was a young medical student in Singapore, unsure of where he’d take his career, when he witnessed a simple surgery spectacularly transform the life of a patient. His mind was quickly made up.

“After watching painless cataract surgery restore sight in about 20–30 minutes, I knew I wanted to pursue ophthalmology,” he says.

Decades later, the professor and Executive Director of the Singapore Eye Research Institute (SERI) marvels at today’s cutting-edge, almost keyhole, cataract procedure.

At the same time, Tin is aware of the World Health Organization’s estimate that approximately 1.3 billion people live with some form of vision impairment, with nearly 40 million of those deemed legally blind.

He also knows that every five seconds someone, somewhere in the world goes blind, and that every minute a child loses sight.

However, it’s not the staggering numbers that overwhelm as much as the fact that 80 per cent of these vision impairments are avoidable. “Cataracts are still the leading cause of blindness worldwide, which is so unfortunate because they are treatable,” Tin says.

The second leading cause is glaucoma, which is a much tougher, irreversible, and progressive disease with a genetic component.

Dubbed the ‘silent thief of sight’, it is estimated that by 2020 nearly 80 million people worldwide between the ages of 40 and 80 will have glaucoma, a number expected to increase to 111 million by 2040.