About us

We value your feedback and are always looking to improve. If you’d like to share your thoughts or have a concern, please use our contact form or reach out to us directly using the details on our Contact page.

Learn more about our complaints policy.

Your donation could be used to restore someone’s sight, but it may also go towards a range of other programme activities like training eye doctors and nurses. These health professionals will then go on to help thousands of people in their community. All of the work we do aims to strengthen eye health systems throughout the Pacific.

Learn more about the impact of your donation.

You can find learning resources based on the work of Fred Hollows and The Foundation on our education page.

The cost of restoring sight differs from country to country due to a number of varying factors. In some countries, we can restore sight for as little as $25.

This $25 covers the cost of the vital components of cataract surgery including the intraocular lens (IOL) and other consumables such as bandages, local anaesthetic and medications. This $25 does not incorporate the costs of the clinics, equipment or medical training of the doctors and nurses.

Medical treatment in countries like New Zealand is more expensive because it uses different techniques with more advanced and costly equipment. Therefore it’s impossible to compare with other countries whose medical systems are less developed or have limited health budgets. In the Pacific, a manual and more cost-effective technique is used that doesn’t require the expensive technology but achieves the same result.

Another way of looking at it is that in some of the countries where we work, people may be living on only a few dollars a day. The $25 it costs for an operation as a percentage of their yearly income can be quite similar to the approximately $5,000 it costs in New Zealand, where the average yearly income is around $65,000.

We work across the Pacific region, in countries including Fiji, Kiribati, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Samoa, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.

We also provide support to Nauru and Tuvalu, and have worked with the health authorities in the Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Republic of Marshall Islands, Niue, Timor-Leste, and Tokelau to train 44 eye care clinicians.

We appreciate your request to visit our programmes in the Pacific, but unfortunately we can’t allow visitors in our clinics. This is to avoid disruption to our eye care services and to provide privacy and respect to the patients accessing eye care.

Globally, 9 out of 10 people who are blind or visually impaired don’t need to be, their condition is preventable or treatable. Our focus is in the Pacific where there are chronic shortages of eye doctors and nurses who are able to treat people with avoidable blindness or vision impairment. The impact of these shortages can be seen in countries like Papua New Guinea, where an estimated 5.6% of adults aged over 50 are blind, compared to New Zealand where it is estimated 0.53% of adults over 50 are blind.

In New Zealand we have a public health system that provides a full range of eye care services. If you require treatment, we strongly suggest getting in touch with your general health practitioner or primary healthcare provider.

As of April 2023, we have 37 people in New Zealand and 71 throughout the Pacific.