Dr. John Garrett was in Honduras earlier this year for his annual mission trip when he spotted a familiar face in the waiting room.

Two years earlier, Dr. Garrett was wrapping up a week performing cornea transplants when a young lady burst through the door asking if he would examine her.

She had traveled a day with her grandmother to see Dr. Garrett. Both of her parents had died of AIDS when she was young, and she had not been able to see since infancy. Her vision was so poor, she couldn’t even count fingers. She had traveled with her grandmother to several clinics, only to hear that there was nothing they could do. They hoped Dr. Garrett would give them a better answer.

“When I examined her, I thought there was nothing I could do either,” Dr. Garrett said. “But my last patient had cancelled their surgery, so I decided to try the surgery with that available cornea.”

It was a scramble to find an anesthesiologist to assist with the Friday evening surgery on such short notice, but after several failed phone calls, the head of a local hospital agreed to volunteer. The next morning, Dr. Garrett saw the girl and her grandmother crying and speaking to each other in rapid Spanish.

“I thought something was wrong until the translator explained to me that she was crying because she was happy her granddaughter could see for the first time in her life,” he said.

Having returned this year for a second transplant on her other eye, the girl saw Dr. Garrett and simply hugged him.

“There is no eye bank in Honduras,” Dr. Garrett said. “There are doctors there who can perform cornea transplants, but they don’t have access to tissue. Without Eversight’s generosity, these people wouldn’t be able to see.”

Incredible moments like these are made possible by the generosity of donors and their families, and through the Eversight charitable services program, which waives the fees associated with corneal transplantation for lowincome patients and humanitarian efforts such as Dr. Garrett’s. In countries where there is limited access to eye tissue, these mission trips can be a person’s only hope of restored sight.

Eversight affiliates – Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey and Ohio – contributed to provide the 20 corneas Dr. Garrett brought to Honduras this year.

“The greatest need in these countries is for surgeons to come and bring corneas for transplants,” said Dr. Garrett, who has traveled on mission trips annually for the past 30 years, alternating between Honduras and Ghana.

On this trip, Dr. Garrett’s transplant patients included an infant less than a year old and an 80-year-old man who had been attacked with a machete and needed a complete reconstruction. Many had been waiting years to see again.

“Deciding on who are the best candidates for surgery is difficult, and I often see patients on subsequent trips who were not selected previously,” he said. “But I’m grateful to Eversight and to the donors who have given this gift. It’s amazing to see the impact it has on people’s lives.”