LUMEN Summer 2020 - Flipbook - Page 5
MEDICINE
POLITICS
Seeing the
world in all
its beauty
James's mission to
fight avoidable blindness.
STORY BY KELLY BROWN
E
ighty per cent of the world’s visual impairment
and blindness is avoidable, according to Australian
of the Year and alumnus Dr James Muecke AM.
It’s this idea that has motivated James throughout
his career. It’s what took him out of Australia and to Asia to
provide his expertise, where access to healthcare is a human
rights issue.
It is also the impetus behind Sight for All, the not-forprofit organisation James started with colleagues to provide
eye health care projects, to not only reduce blindness but
to alleviate poverty and save lives in some of the poorest
communities in the world.
“It was just something that was inside me and I knew, for as
long as I can remember, probably as young as seven or eight
years of age, that I wanted to do medicine.”
ALUMNI MAGAZINE - SUMMER 2020
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