Charity Work

Mr Sherafat has a great interest in charity work and has travelled extensively to developing countries in order to fulfil his commitment to reaching as many people as possible who might benefit from his expertise.

He has performed ophthalmic work both in the Middle-East, Burma (Myanmar) and Ghana, where he carried out cataract extractions, pterygium excisions, laser treatment and oculoplastic surgery for sight threatening lid diseases such as trachoma. In his most recent trip to Bangladesh in July 2022 he performed cataract surgery on 108 patients.

A reflection on charity work

I continue to learn from my charity trips. There are many stimuli which have driven me to carry out charity work. By far the greatest of those are satisfaction, duty and gratitude, though there are many other reasons such curiosity, experience, education & adventure. I have carried out work in Burma, Ghana, Iran & Bangladesh, some more than once. In July 2022 I carried out my fourth trip to Bangladesh where I carried out 108 cataract operations in one week.

As ever such trips fill you with a multitude of emotions and experiences, ranging from success to failure, frustration, the realisation of the realities and limitations of working in third world countries and the many rapid adaptations and pragmatic compromises, one has to make and accept in order to make such ventures bear fruit. Most of all the experience is truly humbling and a reminder of the very many uncompromising, often elementary standards that we have grown to expect and take for granted in the Western world and we should be grateful for.

Ultimately my perspective has always been that these are infinitely rewarding and enlightening experiences and one of the most exciting periods of the year, I plan and look forward to with great anticipation. As ever ones satisfaction and sense of personal reward is always far greater than what one can actually achieve, which is a drop in the ocean. Now that we have hopefully put covid behind us, I can hopefully play some catch up and do the trips more regularly!