The Bio Report

We spend a lot of time on The Bio Report talking about innovation. We are living at a time of great scientific advances that are translating into remarkable therapies that are changing people’s lives. Sometimes, though, the type of innovation needed to address a global health problem has more to do with access and delivery than technology. This was brought home to me when my friend Menghis Bairu, an Eritrean-born physician, life sciences executive, and philanthropist, returned from a recent trip. Menghis had gone to Ethiopia and Eritrea, where he worked with the Himalayan Cataract Project. HCP is working to eradicate curable blindness. There are some 18 million people in the developing world who are unable to perform the tasks of daily living because of easily treatable cataracts that can be addressed with a fast and inexpensive procedure. During a one-week period in these countries, the organization performed nearly 4,500 sight-saving surgeries and provided training to doctors in there. We spoke to Mat