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Dr. Iris Moroz and Dr. Amir Alhalel, eye specialists from Tel Hashomer Medical Center, conducted a ten-day on-the-spot eye clinic in Tonga. In the picture: Dr. Moroz with recovering patients.

Israel's involvement in the battle against blindness began in 1959 when the late Professor Isaac C. Michaelson, then head of the Eye Department at the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem, designed an innovative two-pronged program based on a formula by which Israeli specialists in ophthalmology would be dispatched to start and help staff new eye departments in a developing country while, at the same time, doctors and nurses from that country would undergo specialized ophthalmologic training in Israel. On their return home they would take over and run eye-care units that had been set in motion by their Israeli colleagues.

This pattern first took place in 1960 when MASHAV and the Hadassah Medical Center sent six Israeli physicians to establish and staff a 30-bed eye hospital in Liberia. In subsequent years, this formula would be extended and expanded to nearly all African countries and other continents.

Today, after almost five decades of cooperation and support, MASHAV continues to send Israeli eye-doctors to countries throughout the developing world to treat preventable blindness and ocular disease. The Israeli teams set up "eye camps" for ten days to two weeks, bringing with them extensive treatment equipment often unavailable in the country. During the course of their mission, they make hundreds of examinations, perform over a hundred operations to restore sight, train local staff and often donate medical equipment at the end of their stay.

Read about MASHAV eye camps in Mauritania, Nepal and Tonga.