One patient stumbles across the operating room, guided by a nurse. Fifteen minutes later, she is smiling ear-to-ear as she can now see clearly for the first time in years. This process was repeated 60 times over two days, in a cataract surgery mission to Sarawak, Malaysia. In a cross-border partnership between a team from NUH Department of Ophthalmology comprising Dr Paul Zhao, Dr Yuen Yew Sen and Dr George Thomas, and a Malaysian cataract outreach programme – the aim of the mission was to relieve those with less geographic and financial access to more traditional routes of eye care.

With highly motivated local volunteers, including local ophthalmologists, nurses, operating room technicians and industry representatives, the mission involved bringing equipment for surgery via bus to more remote hospitals without eye care services. Patients who were not able to afford surgery received their surgeries free-of-charge.

Where there was a lack of abundance of technical equipment, the ingenuity, thriftiness of equipment use and the human spirit compensated. Energy levels were high, as was the sense of freedom in the operating room, as everyone was out of their natural hospital ecosystem and yet was working with one aim. New faces, different instrumentation and adapted surgical methods were used for the often very dense cataracts in patients.

Despite this, the process of giving was far from one-sided. Where many people received joy from their new vision, the volunteers surely received more in the process; joy in seeing the blind see, smiles in watching a new smile emerge, happiness in watching a patient leave the operating theatre a little happier than when they entered.