Eye doctor has grand vision

December 17, 2010

By Jayme Poisson, originally published on HealthZone.ca

Last week, Matthew Bujak walked into the Eye Bank at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, picked up a package filled with human eyeballs and corneas and boarded a plane to Nigeria.

Since arriving in the west African nation, the ophthalmologist has been performing a marathon of surgeries (think up to 500). His mission: To give a man, a woman, a child, the chance to see.

And there's no time to waste. The tissue he's got is only good for about two weeks.

Bathing in dirty water or even something like smallpox, eradicated in this part of the world, has left eyes scarred and clouded over. A new cornea, one that will let the light in, can fix that problem.

Bujak took about 10 donations from Canada. His colleague is bringing more from the U.S.

In most other cases, cataracts have inched their way in — something a simple surgery can help rectify.

It's no easy feat to receive a cornea implant. We need more donations in Canada. But standards are different here, and so, tissue that might otherwise not be used can benefit those in impoverished countries.

“They have global standards that are not quite as strict as our standards,” says Linda Sharpen, manager of the Eye Bank, adding that regulations elsewhere aren't bad, “just different.”

For example, surgeons in Canada prefer to use tissue that's between seven and nine days old. Elsewhere, like Nigeria, the window is two weeks.

“If you can't see at all we can give you the vision to go to the bathroom, cook for your family,” says Sharpen of sending tissue abroad. “Here, we want to restore you to a job, to allow you to use a computer.”

There are more than 37 million visually impaired people worldwide. And more than 90 per cent of those come from impoverished countries. It's an alarming number that's largely preventable and curable.

Bujak is on a mission to change that. “This sounds cliché but I find my work incredibly satisfying,” he says over coffee at the CNIB before his departure.

“I went into medicine to help people,” he adds simply.

The 34-year-old, who studied physiotherapy at Queen's University, then attended med school at U of T, now works alongside American ophthalmologist Geoff Tabin.

Journalist David Oliver Relin, co-author of the bestseller Three Cups of Tea, has been writing a book on Tabin and his crusade to cure blindness in his lifetime.

Bujak describes the Harvard-educated doctor as a force to be reckoned with. His work in Nepal, India, North Korea and sub-Saharan Africa has garnered worldwide acclaim.

The pair, both avid mountain climbers, met while working in Ethiopia.

Having recently returned from the snow-capped mountains of Nepal, Bujak clicks his way through a slide show of pictures.

In one, a woman is smiling, a toothless grin. Over her eye, a plastic protective patch.

“The best part is seeing all the people's smiles,” he says.

In another picture, Bujak is dancing with a group of local kids. A man, also wearing eyes patches, dances alongside him.

He's smiling too.