photo of Dr. Michael Gilbert
Dr. Michael Gilbert in Ghana.

Dr. Michael Gilbert, MD

Medical Partner

Dr. Gilbert is a cornea specialist who has been practicing for over two decades. In the summer of 2010 Dr. Gilbert took his first trip to Accra, Ghana and has now made this charity mission an annual project. He has done hundreds of cataract surgeries for those who suffer and are unable to get care, coordinating with outreach programs that bring patients in from remote villages, as far as eight hours away.

He brings hundreds of donated supplies including surgical instruments (blades, sutures, injectors, and implants) and corneal tissue (from SightLife). Donor corneal tissue is only available through importation to Ghana.

He has begun to do corneal transplantation in the country’s largest and primary hospital: Korle Bu Teaching Hospital. He also spent time doing cornea clinic consults. He gave cornea lectures to residents and showed them a surgery that they had never seen before. Dr. Gilbert makes a point of teaching both local doctors and residents while he is over seas so that a self-sustaining program might be created.

He feels that it is imperative to treat curable blindness so that the people, who were a burden to their family and society due to their handicap, can become productive members of society. He still remembers when a patient recognized the clinic van that was going out to a remote village, and stopped it just to say thank you because he could now provide for his family, when before he was totally reliant on them due to his treatable blindness.