Probonodoctors.org
Founder’s Letter to Potential Donors

I was very fortunate to meet Dr. Amescua, a Florida-based medical specialist who successfully treated my very difficult eye condition. In conversation, he told me he was performing pro bono cataract surgeries in Ciudad Juarez in his native country. Patients there had very limited access to the procedure due to lack of public funding and medical expertise. With just a few more thousand dollars, he could treat many more patients a year, at a low cost per procedure as he had free access to medical facilities. He only needed to pay for procedure disposables and nurse time. He was also training local specialists and interns at a nearby medical school to master his superior know-how. I became rapidly overwhelmed at the thought of helping many people return to normal eyesight as well as building a long-term stable solution to a serious problem. Up to that moment, I had never had the chance to make such a big difference in so many people’s lives. I decided to help Dr. Amescua enlarge his pro bono efforts.

And then, I remembered my good friend Dr. Mehta, a world expert in STEMI heart attack procedures, who has saved over 2000 lives often in the deep of the night, often pro bono. He could not accept that lives could be lost or irreversibly damaged because non-experts would act too slowly. Delays before and during the procedure would cause the heart tissue to fail beyond repair. As the clock starting from the attack until completion of intervention ticked beyond the “golden hour” where the heart tissue can still recover, lives would be lost. Families would be informed of their loved one’s death. It did not have to be! Pro bono, Dr. Mehta embarked on setting “fast” intervention networks in Puerto Rico, Columbia, India, China. Dr. Mehta remains a close friend of mine, and to this day, I don’t know anyone who has saved directly or indirectly so many lives, by the tens of thousands. A lot of that that pro bono.

So together with a few friends, we decided to more broadly help pro bono medicine. To support doctors in their pro bono service. To help underserved populations gain access to life-saving or life-changing care. To train new doctors. We have created a network called probonodoctors.org. Doctors and donors are the core of the network. Each donor is encouraged to bring his excellent doctor and some money. Each doctor is encouraged to present their exciting pro bono projects and to invite some of their existing donors in search of additional giving opportunities to join the network. The hope is that the network will accelerate the creation and implementation of pro bono medical services.

Please join the probonodoctors.org network. We commit to: