Fred Hollows & Gabi – The founders of The Fred Hollows Foundation
Fred and Gabi were two eye care professionals, supporting each other working to restore sight in remote areas lacking eye health care. From saving the blind together, they evolved into a couple, a husband and wife, and also established The Fred Hollows Foundation continuing to train medical professions, perform different eye surgeries, and restore sight. Even their wedding cake was decorated with a map of their journey to eliminate trachoma blindness.
We sincerely invite you to participate in our monthly donation plan, continuing our journey of restoring sight, so we can help more people and go further.
A monthly donation of HKD250 can train one eye surgeon, helping to establish a local medical team that remains in the area. Each surgeon can perform up to 1,000 eye surgeries per year.
In 2025, our target is to train 120 ophthalmic surgical doctors. With each bit of love, hope, and change, let's restore sight together.
From restoring sight together, to loving together
One is an ophthalmologist, and the other is an orthoptist. They are two of the founders of The Fred Hollows Foundation - Professor Fred Hollows and Gabi Hollows.
Professor Hollows was already renowned in the Australian ophthalmic community in his early years. He was an authority in ophthalmology. Years ago, he was invited to an Aboriginal camp in northern Australia, where he discovered the inadequate level of health care, especially with a high prevalence of trachoma among children and adults. That visit spurred Fred’s determined to improve access to eye care across Australia, especially in remote Aboriginal communities.
Fred and Gabi first met in the early 70s during her training as an orthoptist.
“The first words I ever had from him, he was telling us all off in a lecture,” she recalls. “But I was never shy or scared of doctors because I’d been going to eye clinics since I was a child. Fred was such a livewire, so outspoken, so passionate, we just connected.”
A few years later, they worked together on the National Trachoma and Eye Health Program a journey that took them to over 465 Indigenous communities in outback Australia.
The journey to restore sight never ends.
Marrying in 1980, their wedding cake was a map of their travels on the trachoma program.
But there were many more journeys – to Nepal, Eritrea, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Thailand and Myanmar – performing countless operations, training local surgeons.
In 1985, Fred visited Nepal, Burma, Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh on behalf of the World Health Organization and, two years later, he visited war-torn Eritrea. These experiences had a huge effect on Fred, motivating him to find a way to reduce the cost of eye care and treatment in developing countries. Fred saw the need for factories to produce affordable intraocular lenses. These lenses were used to treat cataract and significantly cut the cost of restoring sight. He sought to empower local communities by founding these factories in Nepal and Eritrea. The lenses were expensive when made in western countries, but affordable and accessible when made locally. The factories have produced millions of lenses and are a continuing reminder of Fred’s enduring impact.
This also laid the important foundation for the sight-restoring Program - producing low-cost artificial lenses, and also enabled us to restore vision to a cataract patient for just HKD150 now.
His final years – training eye specialists
Despite being diagnosed with cancer, Fred was determined to keep pushing for change in the countries he cared deeply about. In the last few months of his life, he discharged himself from hospital to fly to Vietnam to begin training over 300 Vietnamese eye specialists in modern surgery techniques. Fred and Gabi set up The Fred Hollows Foundation with the help of some friends to ensure his work would continue into the future.
Join us and restore sight together!
Fred died on 10 February 1993 and was given a state funeral. He had asked to be buried in Bourke where he had a great affinity with the people and the land.
In the years since Fred died, Gabi has devoted herself to The Foundation she and Fred started together. Being able to restore a person’s sight, bring joy and a chance at a better life is what drives her day after day, just as it did Fred.
You can help us get one step closer to achieving Fred’s dream of eliminating trachoma and ending avoidable blindness. Donate and support The Fred Hollows Foundation's restore sight work.
"20-20-20 eye care Lens Clothes"
To thank you for your support, The Fred Hollows Foundation is specifically offering a personalized "9 out of 10 people who are blind don't have to be." to friends who join our monthly donation program.
Thank you for your support, allowing us to go further on our journey to restore sight and help more people.
Lens Clothes: Quantities are limited, available while supplies last.
Lens Clothes Size: 15cm X 15cm
WHAT IMPACT CAN YOUR DONATION BRING?
Blindness and vision impairment is a health issue, and related to a person's well-being, quality of life and development opportunities. The Fred Hollows Foundation believes that a fly-in-fly-out model is not the best way to develop a place’s eye health care. Our vision is to build sustainable, good quality and affordable eye care in remote areas of the world.
Your donation will be used to:
- Train surgeons or eye health workers
- Provide medical equipment
- Organise eye screening camps in remote areas
- Raise awareness of eye health to the public
- Invest in innovation and research
