Tell HN: Did you know that you can help restore a person’s eyesight for $50?

Dear HN,

Is there a better way to start a year than with acts of generosity?

Recently, I learned about the Seva Foundation, which counts Larry Brilliant, Ram Dass and Steve Jobs among its founders. The foundation's mission is to "build sustainable eye care systems worldwide by creating equitable access to eye care, building capacity of new and existing eye hospitals and systems, and collecting and learning from evidence."

I perused their website, and was taken aback by how common it is in many parts of the world for scores of people to suffer from vision impairment due to cataracts - a condition that can be easily cured with a simple surgery that costs 50$ to carry out.

It is a powerful reminder of the stark inequalities that exist in the world. I feel grateful that there are people like the Seva Foundation, who are doing something about it.

You can learn more about the foundation and donate to the cause at:

https://www.seva.org/

P.S. I am not affiliated with the Seva Foundation, I just found them to be a genuinely great organization and wanted to spread the word.

This is my favorite charity. I've been donating to them for at least 5 years now and I even ask extended family to donate to them for Christmas instead of buying me gifts that I don't want/need. They send a lot of annoying snail-mail though, I should call and see if I can at least opt-out of that.

In Australia/New Zealand we have a similar charity started by an Ophthalmologist that began by performing the surgeries himself:

https://www.hollows.org/au/about-fred

Ukraine should have dated but effective soviet/russian equipment and plenty of doctors at free healthcare tier. This kind of operations are done more than 30 years. My grandmother had it in rural city. What exactly this charity do? Hook doctors to use US equipment to sell it to government later?

I've long been surprised at how pervasive bad eyesight is, and often at a very young age. It seems like an adaptive trait. Why is it so common to have poor eyesight? What other aspects of human development suffer so much that seem so important for survival?