Jack A. Aaron, MD
Jack A. Aaron, MD was nominated to receive this year’s Outstanding Humanitarian Service Award by the Arizona Ophthalmological Society.
Dr. Aaron has provided voluntary medical and surgical eye care to the underprivileged in the U.S., Mexico, Central America, the Amazon Basin (Brazil), as well as multiple locations in Africa and the Far East. He has helped to establish eye care programs in rural remote areas and continues to support and provide impetus to keep them running.
Since 1992, Dr. Aaron has traveled extensively to southern Africa to volunteer his services through Surgical Eye Expeditions, International (S.E.E. Int’l.). He has worked and coordinated with local ophthalmologists and organizations, such as Eyes for Africa (Dr. Solomon Guramatunhu, Chair and founder, Zimbabwe). Over the years, Dr. Aaron has performed thousands of cataract surgeries on the Shona, Ndebele, and the isolated Batonga tribes of Zimbabwe. He has also partnered with Ministries of Health (Dr. Helena Ndume, Namibia) and Lions International (Dr. D.J. Kwendakwema, Zambia). The rural people he has helped are the poorest of society. Most were already blind and would certainly have remained so without his services. He has worked in district hospitals and clinics, often times with very basic equipment. He would bring operating microscopes, IOLs, sutures, medications, and other supplies, as needed. He performed surgeries from early morning to late at night to help as many people as he could. He has provided the best care possible for these patients, sometimes under the most difficult of circumstances.
During his chairmanship (1999-2003) of the Rotary International Vocational Fellowship for Eye Care (now the Rotary Action Group for Blindness Prevention), Dr. Aaron became involved in the coordination and delivery of services in rural areas of Cambodia, where minimal or no eye care was previously available. Through the tireless efforts of the Rotary Club of Singapore in conjunction with the Cambodian National Program for Eye Health (Dr. Do Seiha) as well as the support of S.E.E. Int’l., over the years Dr. Aaron and many other Rotarian ophthalmologists have regularly volunteered and performed thousands of sight-saving and sight-restoring procedures throughout the country. In addition a milestone was reached in 2007 with dedication of the Rotary Eye Unit at Pursat, Cambodia. This is a first of its kind; a full service eye care center, which was built, financed, and equipped as a joint project of Rotary International Districts 3310 (Dr. Y.S. Lau) and 3460.
Closer to home, Dr. Aaron has organized and with colleagues provided surgical eye care for blind disadvantaged patients along the U.S. Mexican border. Since 1985, in partnership with the Lions Clubs of Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora, Dr. Aaron has spearheaded free sight restoring cataract/IOL procedures on Mexican patients in the border area. Dr. Aaron is also active in his local chapter of the Flying Samaritans for which he both started and staffs a medical eye clinic which has established an eye glass distribution program in El Rosario, Baja California, Mexico.
Dr. Aaron has consistently returned to support the many projects that he helped to establish. These efforts have been in conjunction with the outstanding, dedicated, caring, and excellent local eye care personnel who strive to implement effective blindness prevention and treatment programs under difficult circumstances. Dr. Aaron has been both privileged and honored to have worked with and been able to support these individuals, and to see that many of their programs have become successful and in some cases self sufficient. Dr. Aaron has been involved with these projects at his own expense, taking time away from home, family, and work. Some of the areas he has worked in have been wracked by political, social, and economic turmoil, as well as with crumbling infrastructure and even serious epidemics and famine.
Dr. Aaron is greatly respected as a surgeon, colleague, and humanitarian. Through his professional career of long-term humanitarian participation in sight-saving organizations, he serves as an example of what it means to be a physician. The Academy is proud to honor Dr. Aaron with this year’s Outstanding Humanitarian Service Award.
