Larry Thomas and Peter Smars – Tropical Healthcare Alliance Foundation
Dr. Larry Thomas specializes in emergency medicine. In the late 1980’s, Larry decided to take a course on tropical medicine in England to take a break from the stress of working in the emergency room. This course led him to travel to Ethiopia several times, and one of the main things he noticed there was how relatively inexpensive it was to make a huge impact on people’s health through simple efforts. In 2006, Larry teamed up with Peter Smars of the Mayo Clinic and together they founded the Tropical Healthcare Alliance Foundation to fund basic preventive services and also provide procedures such as cataract surgeries at very low costs. Though their primary focus is on addressing blindness through cataract surgeries, the Tropical Healthcare Alliance Foundation also provides dental care, shoes and treatment for foot diseases, services for women with childbirth complications, and access to clean water. Since they started, they’ve performed close to 6,000 cataract surgeries and changed the lives of nearly 50,000 people for the better.