“In April 2024, the Chesterton Foundation kindly awarded the international Medical Education Trust 2000 (IMET2000) a grant of £15,000 to carry out 120 cataract operations in Herona Hospital, Kisoga Town, Mukono District in Uganda on destitute, blind or near blind Ugandans free to patients subsisting on less than a dollar a day. These were done at 20 per month, costing IMET2000 £2,5000 each month. The cost in big hospitals in Kampala is at least $700 per cataract operation which is impossible for our patients being treated in Herona Hospital. The final monthly quota will be done on September 22^nd, 2024.

This means that we have saved the sight of124 patients, many of whom could see for the first time in years, indeed some for life. There was a slight delay in completion of all that your generous grant of £15,000 made possible as a piece of essential equipment broke down and an engineer from Kenya had to be paid to come to Herona Hospital and fix it successfully.  All of us in IMET2000 are sure this is a wonderful investment in peoples’ lives. We can only thank the Chesterton Foundation for immense generosity. With other fundraising efforts, we now have enough in the kitty to pay for another 20 cataract operations in October and November. That means we will have restored sight to some 180 patients in 2024. We are aiming to do at least 250 in 2025. We are fortunate that Dr Susan Kikirakikira, the Ugandan ophthalmologist carrying out the operations at such low cost to IMET2000, has such a high success rate. She is superb and we thank her too for her altruistic devotion to her own society.”