An Israeli medical delegation recently returned from Ethiopia, where sight-saving treatments were provided to more than 1,600 people, including refugees and members of the Ethiopian Jewish community.
The mission, led by professor Morris Hartstein, senior oculoplastic surgeon at Shamir Medical Center, was carried out under the auspices of the non-profit Operation Ethiopia. The team spent six intensive days in the African country, setting up mobile eye clinics in four different locations and delivering urgently needed care to those with no access to ophthalmologists.
The delegation treated 1,653 patients, including nearly 500 orphaned children, and distributed more than 440 pairs of eyeglasses and 654 units of medication donated by Jewish communities in Israel and around the world. The team worked at refugee camps near Debre Berhan, the Mother Teresa Charity Mission, the Mekedonia Center for people with disabilities and within the local Jewish community.
“What began in 2014 as a family volunteer trip has become our life’s mission,” said Hartstein, who founded the organization along with his wife, Alisa. “We witnessed people losing their vision to conditions that can be treated easily elsewhere, cataracts, infections, and preventable diseases, simply because they lack access to care. We felt compelled to return year after year, because otherwise these patients would remain untreated.”
Accompanied by ophthalmology medical residents from Shamir, Beilinson and Meir Medical Centers, as well as 10 volunteers, the delegation worked under difficult conditions, often setting up makeshift clinics inside churches, classrooms, or tents.
“People line up from six in the morning,” said Alisa Hartstein, who manages Operation Ethiopia. “We examine hundreds of patients each day. The gratitude, the relief and the joy we see, it’s indescribable.”
