YouTube star MrBeast helps 1000 blind people by sponsoring their cataract surgery

A YouTube star and a real-life superstar, MrBeast is making the world a better place through his good deeds. The content creator financed 1000 people for their cataract removal who were blind or near-blind but could not afford the surgery themselves.

MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson shared a video on Saturday, in which he said, "We’re curing a thousand people’s blindness". His video crossed over 30 million views as of Sunday afternoon. The video features before-and-after footage of cataract patients seeing with clear vision after finishing the surgery.

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Jimmy also gave cash donations and other gifts to the participants of his latest stunt.

Jimmy was helped by Jeff Levenson, who is an opthalmologist and surgeon in Jacksonville, Florida. Jeff did the first round of surgeries and has coordinated the "Gift of Sight" program for over 20 years which provides free cataract surgery for uninsured patients who are legally blind due to cataracts.

"Half of all blindness in the world is people who need a 10-minute surgery", Levenson says in the video, referring to the cataract-removal surgery.

Jeff explained to CNN that he became inspired to people access cataract surgery after undergoing his own cataract correction surgery.

"In the days and weeks after my own cataract surgery, I was stunned by how bright and beautiful and vivid the world was,” he said. “But I was shocked by the idea that there are hundreds of millions, probably 200 million people around the world, who are blind or nearly blind from cataracts and who don’t have access to the surgery".

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Levenson got a call from a member of Jimmy’s team in September. "I had never heard of MrBeast", he said. "So I almost hung up. But I gratefully did not hang up."

They started by calling homeless shelters and free clinics to create a list of patients in the Jacksonville area who needed cataract surgery but could not afford it. Eventually, they had a group of 40 patients, and Jeff performed all of their surgeries in a single day, starting at 7 am. and ending at 6 pm.

Jeff said that patients couldn't believe that someone is out there to rescue them from blindness for free, just out of generosity.Jeff hopes that the video and Jimmy’s generosity inspire "a concerted effort to end needless blindness."

"If MrBeast can light a fire, and if we can get governmental and private support behind it, we can end half of all the blindness in the world", he said. "Without all that much cost, and with incredible gains in human productivity and human potential."

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