Fred Hollows

Fred Hollows was a straight shooter. A specialist in treating the eye disease trachoma, he stomped through the Outback helping Aborigines keep their sight. Between 1974 and 1976 his teams screened 100,000 people. After giving sight to indigenous Australia, he did the same in Africa. The wild colonial boy of Australian medicine with the gruff voice and tender touch was probably the first doctor to give life to the "aid abroad" crusades that have become a calling for medicos with a conscience. Hollows died in 1993 of cancer, but the sight he gave others, lives on forever.