As the year draws to close, as we round out the end of 2017 with holidays celebrating unity, generosity and love, now comes the time for reflection. The year 2017 marked great, landscaping efforts in the field of eye cancer research and training from The Eye Cancer Foundation, culminating perhaps most fantastically with the profound success of The Second Eye Cancer Working Day held in Sydney, Australia, among many other exciting projects. The achievements of this year have served as poignant reminders that hard work and focused philanthropy can support great progress. These accomplishments, shared throughout the buzzing Eye Cancer Foundation’s website, could not be completed without the generous help of donors. For this, the volunteers at The Eye Foundation are extremely grateful.
Your support enables The ECF team to provide much needed fellowship opportunities for new eye cancer specialists from previously unserved countries. As you may know, 7,000 babies with retinoblastoma die each year in the less developed world. The ECF has made a priority of training eye cancer specialists for these countries and will need to support them upon their return. The 2020 initiative, which aims to train 20 retinoblastoma doctors in 20 underserved countries, has already provided fellowship education for 12 deserving ophthalmologists. The ECF’s partnership with The International Council of Ophthalmology (ICO) enables this, ensuring the quality of training these fellows receive. It is through your support that these fellowships were established with success, and because of this, children who were born to less fortunate circumstances have a chance at vision and life.
The ECF is especially excited to have sponsored The Second Eye Cancer Working Day, an event bringing together eye cancer specialists from around the world, which embodied much of what The Foundation is all about. In the Working Day, there were sections on developing big data registries used to answer questions that could not be addressed by single center studies. There were initiatives for standards in fellowship education, Dr. Tero Kivelä presented an initiative to promote doctors reporting their clinical outcomes. In addition, The ECF’s open access surgical text and movie atlas was highlighted, and will become public within the next sixth months.
Your gift today demonstrates your dedication to supporting an exciting, functional, and deeply important effort to promote multi-center and international cooperation in ophthalmic oncology. Your gift today will save both vision and lives all over the world. With so much to look forward to, The ECF team hopes they can count on your support.
Please consider making your gift to The Eye Cancer Foundation today, and be a crucial part in this fight against eye cancer. Donate by visiting The Eye Cancer Foundation website, eyecancercure.com, or simply click here.
