(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- A local eye doctor is reflecting on a recent trip across the globe to offer medical training and sight-saving surgeries.
For five days, Opthamalogist and professor at Rush University, Dr. Tamara Fountain joined non-profit Orbis and medical professionals from across the world on a mission trip to Zambia.
The goal of the trip was to decrease the burden of visual impairment.
"There are 19 million people in the country of Zambia and there are 38 opthamalogists, just for some perspective. We have about half that number of people in the Chicago metro (area), about 9 million and we have 850 ophthalmologists here," she explained.
"So they see twice as many people with 5% of the number of doctors."
Fountain said doctors operated in what's called a "Flying Eye Hospital," a literal airplane equipped with a classroom, operating room, and state of the art equipment to help local doctors learn new techniques, so they can better help their communities.
She mentored two local eye doctors while operating on local patients and acknowledged that the doctors she worked with in Zambia had so many fewer resources than doctors in the U.S.
"Sometimes and in developing countries, they may not have access to some of the state of the art equipment," Fountain said. "We are able to have whatever we want and whatever we need as surgeons on the flying Eye Hospital."
After the trip, Fountain is hopeful about eye care in the developing world.
"If we can just improve access through getting more health care providers trained to treat the population that they serve, I think we would go a long ways to eradicating vision loss around the globe," Fountain said.
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