The Assil Sight Fund
“Joining The Fight Against Blindness”

She found herself sobbing late at night. Her three year old boy (N.J.) was going blind from pathologic myopia, an extreme form of nearsightedness. She searched for someone who could help her child, throughout her homeland of Australia and then expanded her search to the entire globe. Since he was only three years old however and because his eye condition was so advanced, making a surgical mistake would leave N.J. with only one eye. No one was volunteering to help. Then one day, N.J.’s mom found our website and made a life changing call. The emotional relief after making a call to our foundation team was felt all around the Hartley home. After making the trek to the United States and meeting Dr. Assil, it was clear the foundation team would need special clearance from the FDA to use a lens that had only been used in adult study patients. After pleading N.J.’s case to the FDA, we were granted permission to use a special lens for N.J. on a compassionate basis. With N.J.’s parents, grandparents and little brother on hand, watching the surgery via closed circuit T.V., the celebration really started the next day when N.J. could see the pictures on the eye chart. He had gone from blindness to near normal vision over night. Today N.J is nine years old and last I spoke with his mother, he is seeing even better with the treated eye than with his other eye and living a very normal life.

Every person deserves a chance to see. The Assil Sight Fund, headed by Dr. Kerry Assil, Medical Director and CEO of the Assil Eye Institute, is a fund dedicated to helping the financially disadvantaged who suffer from severe eye disorders. Every year we do as much as we can to help those that can’t help themselves. People that live hand to mouth and have debilitating eye diseases, cannot often afford care, eventually becoming blind. Most people will never get to the stage where a cataract can cause blindness. For the less fortunate however, blindness may ensue with just a cataract, because without community involvement, they have no way of remedying what has become an everyday “curable” condition. People can be helped; ranging from cataract surgery to a complete corneal transplant. Dr Assil, a world renowned eye surgeon, specializing in cataract removal, corneal transplants, Lasik and other eye surgeries, has put his skills to work for the community, performing these charitable surgeries for the past two decades.