News Release

American Academy of Ophthalmology announces outstanding humanitarian service award recipients

Grant and Award Announcement

American Academy of Ophthalmology

SAN FRANCISCO – The American Academy of Ophthalmology, the Eye M.D. Association, has announced its Outstanding Humanitarian Service Award recipients for 2003. They are: Robert C. Della Rocca, MD, of New York, New York; Marc F. Lieberman, MD, of San Francisco, Calif.; and Eugene Helveston, MD, of Indianapolis, IN.

Dr. Della Rocca, nominated by the New York State Ophthalmological Society, has dedicated himself to providing medical care and teaching to underserved populations throughout the world, especially in Central America and the Middle East. In 1993, Dr. Della Rocca, and his wife Darlene, founded the Volunteer Health Program (VHP), a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing ophthalmic care to the indigent in Latin America. The VHP has collected medical supplies and equipment through donations and fundraising activities, and has organized annual ophthalmic medical/surgical missions, initially to Honduras, and subsequently to Santiago, Dominican Republic. Approximately 100 surgical cases are performed during each mission, including procedures for strabismus, cataract, glaucoma and orbital diseases. Most recently, Dr. Della Rocca traveled to Jerusalem, where he spent two weeks examining patients, performing surgery and helping establish an ophthalmic plastic, orbital and reconstructive surgery service at the St. John Ophthalmic Hospital. He will return yearly to further his work there.

Dr. Lieberman, nominated by the American Glaucoma Society, established the Tibet Vision Project in 1995 as an independent educational program to transfer ophthalmic training skills to the nine-person eye department of the First People's Hospital in Lhasa, Tibet. He and his associates have provided all microscopes, examination equipment and intraocular lens supplies for more than 15 eye camps throughout central Tibet. Dr. Lieberman has donated two months each year for eight years to travel to Tibet to oversee each mission. The Tibet Vision Project also has underwritten further training in the eye-team model for more than 20 surgeons, nurses and technicians at the Tilganga Eye Centre in Katmandu, Nepal. When not present in the country, the Project provides the means for Tibetan doctors to mount and staff their own eye camps to eliminate blindness from cataracts, the predominant preventable cause of vision loss in Tibet and throughout China. Currently, the Project is under a five-year contract with the Swiss Red Cross to retrain their 17 surgeons and eye teams in Tibet's second largest county of Shigatse.

Dr. Helveston, nominated by the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, is recognized for his many contributions to ophthalmology, and especially his dedication to pediatric eye care in poorly developed parts of the world. For more than 20 years, Dr. Helveston has been committed to volunteering for ORBIS International, participating in more than 20 overseas missions. He has lectured in more than 50 countries and served as a visiting surgeon in 16 countries. His commitment to transferring skills and knowledge to help patients around the world led to the development of Cyber-Sight in 1999. Using the technology of the Internet and digital photography, he is providing a continuing consultation program to underdeveloped countries. The online link is available to physicians, and with digital cameras, overseas physicians can send, via e-mail, pictures of their patients' clinical problems for consultation. Working with private funds, Dr Helveston has started programs in Cuba, Romania, India, Albania and the Dominican Republic. To date, more than 800 consults have been completed. In 2002, Dr. Helveston moved Cyber-Sight to ORBIS to allow further expansion. The goal is to have a Web site in the next three years called "Ophthalmology 101," which will have a comprehensive array of featured cases and fully functioning telemedicine consultation in all subspecialties.

The American Academy of Ophthalmology is the world's largest association of eye physicians and surgeons – Eye M.D.s – with more than 27,000 members. For more information about the Annual Meeting, visit the Academy's Web site at www.aao.org/annual_meeting/.

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Contact: For more information or for photos of the award recipients, contact the Academy's media unit at 415-561-8534 or by e-mail at media@aao.org. To register for media credentials to attend the Academy's Annual Meeting, visit www.aao.org/aao/newsroom/mediainfo.cfm.


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