Rolex Laureate Andrew Bastawrous
A description of the work of Andrew Bastawrous, a recipient of the Rolex Award for Enterprise
2 min read
Did you know that there are a billion people around the world who suffer from eyesight problems that are easily treatable. About a third of those people live somewhere with modern optical medicine. There is a man working to change it. His name is Andrew Bastawrous, and he’s a Rolex Laureate. He was one of the 2016 Rolex Award for Enterprise winners.
He’s a British ophthalmologist and the developer of Peek Vision, a mobile, smart phone eye test that’s making it possible for people once unable to receive vision care at all to get professional help. In fact, more than a quarter million people in Kenya received eye tests prior to his expansion across Asia and Africa.
What makes Peek particularly effective is that it doesn’t require an expert to operate it. The smartphone technology allows volunteers with no vision-care experience at all to operate in the field. Bastawrous is particularly interested in allowing for that sort of a solution because the need is so great that waiting for enough ophthalmologists really means not doing anything at all. There will never be enough to overcome the current problem.
But Peek can take a great deal of the hands-on work away from experts so their efforts can be put on handling the problems screening reveals. This effective use of resources is brining vision care to areas that just haven’t had it in the past. This is the sort of work that Rolex seeks to recognize with the Award for Enterprise program.
As part of the Perpetual Planet Initiative, Rolexes overarching approach to philanthropy focused on charitable efforts that protect the planet and improve the lives of people across the world, these Awards offer not only financial assistance to deserving, entrepreneurial dynamos like Bastawrous but in addition, deliver a great deal of media exposure and the resources that accompany such exposure.
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