A TEAM of experts from the United States-based Subraj Foundation visited Guyana last week to perform a series of corneal transplant surgeries at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC). 

Arriving on June 30, the team spent the day at GPHC seeing over 35 patients in the ophthalmology clinic, and on July 1 and 2, the surgeons performed 11 transplants, one cataract surgery, and one removal of corneal foreign body.
Dr. Shailendra Sugrim, Head of the Department of Ophthalmology, generated the list of patients to be seen by the team on June 30 and from that pool of patients, the team decided the suitability for transplant surgery.
The team brought the corneas with them, along with special micro-surgical ophthalmic instruments to perform the surgeries. The donor corneas came from three U.S. eye banks: Eastern Virginia, Texas Lions and NE Pennsylvania.
The team, headed by Dr. Rahul M. Jindal, has been coming to Guyana since 2008, and already has a record of performing twenty-six kidney transplants and six corneal transplants in Guyana. The previous six corneal transplants were successfully done by the same team in Guyana in August, 2014, and the corneas were donated by the N.E. Pennsylvania Eye Bank.
Dr. Jindal, team leader, thanked Michael Khan, CEO of GPHC, nurses and Dr.Sugrim for the superb arrangements in the operating rooms and clinics. And Drs. Waller and Pasternak thanked George Subraj, President of Subraj Foundation, based in Queens, New York, for facilitating the humanitarian mission.
Subraj also promised to fund future missions to perform kidney and cornea transplants at the GPHC. The visiting team commented that their aim is to sustain these procedures in the public hospital where the procedures are free.
The U.S.-based team is working with Dr. Sugrim to generate a list of patients who may require corneal transplants on the next visit, likely in September this year. Patients are urged to contact Dr. Sugrim at the GPHC where all the procedures will be performed completely free of cost.