YouTube star MrBeast helps 1,000 blind people see again by sponsoring cataract surgeries - CNN

CNN  — 

YouTube superstar MrBeast is making the satellite clearer – for astatine slightest 1,000 people.

The content creator’s latest stunt is paying for cataract removal for 1,000 radical who were unsighted oregon near-blind but could not spend the surgery.

“We’re curing a 1000 people’s blindness,” says MrBeast – existent sanction Jimmy Donaldson – successful the Saturday video, which reached implicit 32 cardinal views arsenic of Sunday afternoon.

The video features touching before-and-after footage of patients seeing with wide imaginativeness aft finishing the surgery. The YouTuber besides gave currency donations and different gifts to immoderate of the participants.

Jeff Levenson, an ophthalmologist and surgeon, worked with Donaldson to execute the archetypal circular of surgeries successful Jacksonville, Florida. Levenson has coordinated the “Gift of Sight” program for implicit 20 years, which provides escaped cataract country for uninsured patients who are legally unsighted owed to cataracts.

“Half of each blindness successful the satellite is radical who request a 10-minute surgery,” Levenson says successful the video, referring to the cataract removal surgery.

Levenson explained to CNN helium became inspired to assistance radical entree cataract country aft undergoing his ain cataract correction surgery.

“In the days and weeks aft my ain cataract surgery, I was stunned by however agleam and beauteous and vivid the satellite was,” helium said. “But I was shocked by the thought that determination are hundreds of millions, astir apt 200 cardinal radical astir the world, who are unsighted oregon astir unsighted from cataracts and who don’t person entree to the surgery.”

Levenson got a telephone from a subordinate of Donaldson’s squad successful September. “I had ne'er heard of MrBeast,” helium said. “So I astir hung up. But I gratefully did not bent up.”

They started by calling stateless shelters and escaped clinics to make a database of patients successful the Jacksonville country who needed cataract country but could not spend it. Eventually, they had a radical of 40 patients – and Levenson performed each of their surgeries successful a azygous day, starting astatine 7 a.m. and ending astatine 6 p.m.

Levenson said that patients were successful “disbelief that idiosyncratic would really question them retired to to rescue them from blindness, and past person the kindness and generosity of tone to connection the surgery.”

The ophthalmologist besides connected Donaldson’s squad with SEE International, for which helium serves arsenic the main aesculapian officer. The nonprofit provides escaped eyecare astir the satellite to patients successful need. The enactment helped Donaldson scope adjacent much patients, for a full of 1,000 surgeries completed astir 3 weeks. The video shows patients receiving the country successful Jamaica, Honduras, Namibia, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, Vietnam and Kenya.

Levenson said helium hopes the video and Donaldson’s generosity animate “a concerted effort to extremity needless blindness.”

“If MrBeast tin airy a fire, and if we tin get governmental and backstage enactment down it, we tin extremity fractional of each the blindness successful the world,” helium said. “Without each that overmuch cost, and with unthinkable gains successful quality productivity and quality potential.”