More than 20 years after his death, Fred Hollows just made history

MORE than 20 years after his death, Fred Hollows has broken another record — enabling one million people to see in a single year.

FRED Hollows always was one in a million. Now he has just enabled a million more people to see it.

And all from beyond the grave.

For the first time in history, and more than 20 years after Fred himself died while still on that mission, the Fred Hollows Foundation has performed more than one million eye operations and treatments in a single year.

The record result has been enough to prompt its long-serving CEO Brian Doolan to step down after more than a decade at the helm.

Figures provided to news.com.au reveal the foundation’s doctors and other medical staff performed 1,004,975 operations and treatments in 2016 — a more than 10 per cent increase on the previous year.

Bourke Public School student Shanorah tries out cataract glasses during a Souths Cares rugby league clinic in support of The Fred Hollows Foundation and the Outback Eye Service.

These, including 147,000 cataract operations, either restored sight to people going blind or prevented them from losing their sight — and all in incredibly disadvantaged communities where blindness can often be a matter of life and death and yet — most tragically of all — is completely avoidable.

Gabi Hollows said the result was something even her insanely driven late husband could never have believed possible.

“Fred would never have imagined the Foundation would grow to achieve so much and transform the lives of so many millions of people in the world’s poorest communities,” she told news.com.au.

Announcing his departure, Mr Doolan said eradicating avoidable blindness altogether was now within reach.

“Performing one million eye operations and treatments in a single year is an important milestone and one I am incredibly proud of,” he said.

“We are now so much closer to our goal of ending avoidable blindness.”

The iconic image of Professor Fred Hollows examining the eye of seven-year-old Tran Van Giap in Vietnam in 1992.

As well as the one million mark, the foundation also:

* Screened more than three million people

* Treated more than 18 million people with trachoma with antibiotics

* Trained 78,450 people, including specialist eye surgeons and nurses, community health workers and teachers;

* Built or refurbished 120 medical facilities

* Equipped 3333 community health centres and schools

* Provided $4.4 million of medical equipment and infrastructure provided

* Educated more than 2.9 million schoolchildren and community members about eye health, and

* Provided eye health services to almost 12,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

Gabi Hollows is reunited with Tran van Giap in Bourke, 15 years after Fred’s death in 1993.

Fred Hollows Foundation chair John Brumby thanked the massive number of Australians who supported the work both here and overseas.

“Each year more than 160,000 supporters in Australia power our work,” he said.

“We are a mass movement of everyday Australians, committed to ending avoidable blindness.”

Mr Doolan will step down at the end of this year, more than 12 years after he started, with a replacement to be identified and recruited over the coming months.

The Foundation’s 2016 results will be announced in full at its Annual General Meeting in Sydney next Tuesday.