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This is an excerpt of an article that originally appeared on the UT Southwestern Medical Center website. To view the article in it’s entirety, please click on the “Read More” link at the bottom of the page.
Transplant Services Center at UT Southwestern Medical Center recently provided 46 ocular allografts for transplant to support two Dallas area ophthalmologists as they conducted a medical mission trip to Mombasa, Kenya. C. Bradley Bowman, M.D., and Oluwatosin “Tosin” Smith, M.D., spent six days in Mombasa at the Lighthouse Eye Centre where they performed a number of ocular surgical procedures.
The Lighthouse Eye Centre was founded in 1969 by Bill Ghrist, M.D., an ophthalmologist from California. Today the Eye Centre is a modern clinic and surgical center that saw 32,217 patients and performed 2,118 surgeries in 2015. Besides walk-in and appointment clinics in Mombasa, the center sends out teams to provide ocular health care in rural areas surrounding the city. Many doctors and health care professionals from around the world visit for up to three weeks at a time to assist the local staff.
The Lighthouse Eye Centre is located on Tudor Creek, the smaller harbor of Mombasa, less than two miles from the Indian Ocean. Its mission includes a strong Christian evangelical outreach.
Dr. Bowman, a corneal specialist, and Dr. Smith, a glaucoma specialist, joined forces on a mission trip two years ago. While Dr. Smith is a veteran of nine medical mission trips to western Africa, this was her first trip to Mombasa. Dr. Bowman is member of the Board of Directors for the Lighthouse Eye Centre, and has made six trips to the mission over the past 16 years. Read More.