Mayo Clinic Around the World

Seeing is Believing: Mayo Clinic Eye Doctor Joins a Team Effort in El Salvador

To a group of motivated women from El Salvador, delivering the difficult is all in a day's work. Fifteen years ago, the group, FUDEM (Foundation for the Development of Woman), set out to provide low-cost eye care to El Salvadorians who otherwise wouldn't get it.

To do this well, they need to continually upgrade staff medical training — a daunting task in the face of budget constraints. Their solution: An El Salvadorian Mayo Clinic patient put in a request for help at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.

In April 2005, Michael Stewart, M.D., chair of surgical ophthalmology at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, traveled to El Salvador. "The success of their effort was phenomenal to see," Dr. Stewart says.

Dr. Stewart spent much of his five-day stay traveling to remote areas teaching physicians new clinical and surgical skills. "It was simply amazing to get off the van out in the middle of the mountains and see 200 to 300 patients lined up," Dr. Stewart says. "Fixing eye problems makes a huge difference in a person's ability to function, and most people would think that what FUDEM does is impossible — but they're doing it, and doing it really well."

For more about this grass-roots effort, go to: www.fudem.org.