International Women’s Day: Celebrating Dr. Beth Edmunds

Globally, there are 112 million more women than men living with vision loss, including blindness. One contributing factor is that women make up 70% of the health workforce yet hold only 25% of leadership roles. Cultural and gender biases, limited mentorship, and caregiving responsibilities often restrict advancement for women in eye health. At the same time, in many parts of the world female patients are often more likely to seek care from female providers.

That’s why it’s so important to ensure more highly skilled women can advance in eye care—not just to recognize their expertise and contributions, but to expand access to quality care for the millions of women and girls who need it most.

Originally from Stellenbosch, South Africa, Dr. Edmunds, now works at Casey Eye Insitute in Portland, Oregon. After an invite from Orbis, she generously gave up her free time to support our training project in Chattogram, Bangladesh as a first-time Volunteer Faculty by sharing her unique skills and expertise.

Beth believes it is especially important for female colleagues in lower-income countries to see women in leadership roles, “Unless you see people like you doing something, for many of us you can’t imagine it. I would hope that these women seeing a woman doing it can give them hope” she told us.

As a leading glaucoma specialist, Dr. Edmunds understands the importance of a kind, gentle, and compassionate approach to patient care. Since glaucoma is a lifelong condition, it requires not only medical expertise but also patience and empathy. If left untreated, the disease can lead to irreversible vision loss, but with proper care, its progression can be managed, helping to preserve sight.

Supporting her patients through difficult surgeries and having a plan to preserve their vision throughout their lives means they are, as Dr. Edmunds puts it, “in for the long game.” She adds: “The discipline of keeping the surgical standards high and doing everything you can to keep the surgery safe pays dividends in the long run. So, one’s got to have a degree of patience with this. But the relationships that you develop with your patients is the thing that will keep you going.”

Dr. Edmunds was featured on local Portland 101 KXL FM news sharing her exciting experience on our Bangladesh Flying Eye Hospital project, telling listeners that volunteering “invigorated her” and “made her a better doctor.”

She shared: “I got to see a team working in such an effective manner and achieving so much in such a short of time when none of us had met each other before.

“We had people come from Columbia, from Canada, from Wales, from South Africa, from other parts of Africa, from America. And yet, we worked seamlessly. And I think that, that to me made me a better doctor that these things are worth still trying to achieve in our groups. And also, that you can reach across these divides and that we learn from those experiences. It’s not this old idea of the white savior going out to save vision in other places, it’s truly an experience of learning on both sides and that’s good for doctors to always remember.”

We’d like to thank Dr. Edmunds for being an exceptional leader in her field, sharing her skills with teams around the world with such passion. As she told us recently, “Who would think that a girl who grew up in Stellenbosch in South Africa would be in Bangladesh [with the Flying Eye Hospital]. It’s the most wonderful opportunity.”