Dr. Geoffrey Tabin Continues Quest to Eliminate Unnecessary Blindness

Salt Lake City, Utah
November 20, 2009

Dr. Geoffrey Tabin, Professor of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences University of Utah School of Medicine and Director of the Division of International Ophthalmology at the Moran Eye Center is featured on the cover of the December 2009/January 2010 National Geographic Adventure magazine. In the yearly "Adventurers of the Year" publication, Dr. Tabin is inducted into the National Geographic Adventurer Hall of Fame for his compassionate service and his goal to cure unnecessary blindness throughout the world. The accompanying article written about Dr. Tabin is written by Three Cups of Tea co-author David Oliver Relin. You can read the story on-line at: http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/2009/12/best-of-adventure/geoff-tabin.

Among other adventures, the article describes the compassionate service offered in Ethopia this year by members of the Moran Eye Center team including Dr. Alan Crandall and his wife Julie, a Moran ophthalmic technician, and Dr. Crandall's sister Ann.

Dr. Tabin graduated from Harvard Medical School and is a specialist in corneal disease and refractive surgery. He is also co-founder of the Himalayan Cataract Project (HCP) with Dr. Sanduk Ruit of Nepal. The HCP and the Moran Eye Center support eye care outreach in Nepal, India, Bhutan, Tibet, North Korea, Myanmar, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Ghana, Sudan and Ethiopia. This past year, the HCP and its flagship partner Tilganga Eye Center screened over a quarter of a million patients in the Himalayan region and provided more than 15,000 surgeries, bringing the total number of patients screened since 1994 to nearly 1.7 million and the total number of sight restoring surgeries to over 120,000.

Dr. Tabin is also leading the Moran Eye Center and HCP outreach efforts in partnership with the U.N. Millennium Villages Project to conduct a survey of blindness in Africa, bringing sustaining eye care to twelve specific villages. The U.N. program seeks to end extreme poverty by working within the most underdeveloped areas, village by village throughout Africa, in partnership with governments and other committed stakeholders.

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