Rand Paul trades suits for scrubs on Haiti mission to fight cataracts
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Presidential candidate and ophthalmologist visits western hemisphere’s poorest country to restore vision to hundreds as he acknowledges political struggles
Rand Paul examines the eyes of nine-year-old Natanaelle Jean Louis during a cataract surgery clinic in Cap-Haitien, Haiti. Photograph: Dieu Nalio Chery/AP
Associated Press in Cap-Hatien, Haiti
Sat 22 Aug 2015 10.41 EDT
Mathieux Saint Fleur has been virtually blind for two decades. In less than 24 hours, he will see again. As the 75-year-old Haitian patient lies on an operating table, a US eye surgeon turned politician reassures him, in broken Creole, that the surgery is almost over.
“People need to be encouraged it’s not much longer,” said Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul, an ophthalmologist by training, without taking his eyes off Saint Fleur.
As many of Paul’s competitors courted voters in Iowa and New Hampshire over the last week, Kentucky’s fiery junior senator joined a team of eye surgeons on a four-day mission to Haiti, giving vision to nearly 200 who would not have been blind if they lived in the US. Here in the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, “curable blindness” from common ailments such as cataracts is the norm.
Sen. Rand Paul Returns to the Operating Room for Free Eye Surgery
By Jamilah Muhammad Kentucky
PUBLISHED 7:19 PM ET Oct. 02, 2019
PADUCAH, Ky. - It's not every day a U.S. Senator picks up a scalpel to perform surgery.
Ophthalmologist, and U.S. Senator from Kentucky, Dr. Rand Paul partnered with Dr. Barbara Bowers through a program called Surgery on Sundays. Doctors, nurses and anesthesiologists volunteer their time to provide medical and surgical care.
Sen. Paul says, “Dr. Bowers was nice enough to donate her time and her facility on a Wednesday. That was also when I could come, so we’ll be doing the surgery today. But it is a statewide program and so some of the patients, I think most of them today are from Paducah areas or Western Kentucky.”
In order to qualify as a patient, you have to be uninsured and meet a certain income criteria.
"There’s a lot of government assistance, there are still some people that fall through the cracks and wait and wait and wait. And, some of them having trouble driving, doing the things they need to do because of their cataracts, so I think there’s still a need for things like this," Paul said.