Denise Truscello/Getty Images for Amazon's Crown Channel
YouTube’s top creator MrBeast is giving back to the world in a huge way. According to CNN, the content creator paid for cataract removal for 1,000 blind people. Or those who were near-blind, and couldn’t afford the surgery themselves.
On Saturday, the creator took to YouTube to share a video of the process with his subscribers. The video has currently surpassed 59 million views.
We’re curing a thousand people’s blindness…
The video features sentimental footage of the patients’ before-and-after vision. In addition, the YouTuber also provided cash donations and other gifts to some of the participants as well.
MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, partnered with Jeff Levenson, an ophthalmologist, and surgeon. Levenson performed the first round of surgeries in Jacksonville, Florida. And leads the “Gift of Sight” program which “provides free cataract surgery for uninsured patients who are legally blind due to cataracts.”
Levenson explained more about the condition in the YouTube video.
Half of all blindness in the world is people who need a 10-minute surgery.
In an exclusive interview with CNN, Levenson explained the effect that cataract removal surgery had on his quality of life.
In the days and weeks after my own cataract surgery, I was stunned by how bright and beautiful and vivid the world was. But I was shocked by the idea that there are hundreds of millions, probably 200 million people around the world, who are blind or nearly blind from cataracts and who don’t have access to the surgery.
One of Donaldson’s team members reached out to Levenson to perform the surgeries in September. Then, his team started “calling homeless shelters and free clinics to create a list of patients in the Jacksonville area who needed cataract surgery but could not afford it.”
Donaldson and Levenson eventually created a list of 40 patients. And all surgeries were performed in one day, between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. According to Levenson, patients were in “disbelief that somebody would actually seek them out to rescue them from blindness, and then have the kindness and generosity of spirit to offer the surgery.”
Levenson then connected Donaldson with SEE International which is a nonprofit providing free eyecare to global patients in need. The nonprofit helped Donaldson reach 1,000 patients around the world. And within three weeks, surgeries were completed in “Jamaica, Honduras, Namibia, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, Vietnam, and Kenya.”
Levenson hopes that Donaldson’s initiative can spark a greater movement around the world.
If MrBeast can light a fire, and if we can get governmental and private support behind it, we can end half of all the blindness in the world. Without all that much cost, and with incredible gains in human productivity and human potential.
