Fred Hollows

Fred Hollows (1929–1993) was a New Zealand-born ophthalmologist who expanded eye care for Indigenous Australians and helped establish affordable eye services in developing countries.

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Gabi Hollows: Gabi Hollows is an Australian nurse and humanitarian who helped establish the Fred Hollows Foundation. She continued his work after his death and helped build the foundation bearing his name.
Trachoma: Trachoma is a bacterial eye infection that can cause scarring, inward-turning eyelashes, and blindness. Hollows helped organize treatment and prevention programs against trachoma in remote Australian communities.
Avoidable blindness: Avoidable blindness is vision loss that can be prevented or treated with available interventions. Hollows focused on blindness that persists because effective care is inaccessible or unaffordable.
Dunedin: Dunedin is a city in New Zealand’s South Island and the location of the University of Otago. Hollows was born in Dunedin and studied medicine at the University of Otago.
Vincent Lingiari: Vincent Lingiari was a Gurindji leader who led the Wave Hill Walk-Off in the Northern Territory. Hollows worked with Indigenous communities whose campaigns, including the Gurindji struggle, brought health inequalities into public view.
Cataract surgery: Cataract surgery removes a clouded eye lens and usually replaces it with an artificial intraocular lens. Restoring sight through cataract operations was central to Hollows’s clinical work and outreach programs.
Vision 2020: The Right to Sight: Vision 2020: The Right to Sight was a global initiative launched in 1999 to eliminate avoidable blindness. The initiative carried forward the international public-health approach to blindness that Hollows championed.
University of Otago: The University of Otago is a public research university in Dunedin, New Zealand. Hollows graduated in medicine there before beginning his ophthalmology career.
Charles Perkins: Charles Perkins was an Aboriginal Australian activist and public servant who organized the 1965 Freedom Ride. Perkins and Hollows shared a commitment to confronting racism and improving conditions for Indigenous Australians.
Intraocular lens: An intraocular lens is an artificial lens implanted in the eye, commonly during cataract surgery. Hollows campaigned to make these lenses affordable for eye programs in lower-income countries.