St John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital Group in Jerusalem wins the world’s most prestigious award in the field of Vision

We are delighted to anncounce that the St John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital Group has won the 2023  António Champalimaud Vision Award.  The award was announced in a ceremony chaired by President of Portugal, H.E Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and President of the Champalimaud Foundation, Leonor Beleza, in the presence of public figures and international organizations’ representatives.

The €1 million award recognizes the Hospital Group’s longstanding charitable provision of eye care in the region for the last 140 years. First established in 1882 by Queen Victoria, St. John Eye Hospital served millions of people to restore their sights and has been serving their patients regardless of ethnicity, religion, and ability to pay in the Palestinian territories including the Gaza strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem. The mission of the Hospital Group is built upon the ethos of the Venerable Order of St. John in serving humanity. St. John Eye Hospital Group is part of the Order of St. John, which has become a global humanitarian charity, active in more than 30 countries.

The Hospital is internationally recognized as operating at the highest standards of care. St. John Eye Hospital is the first hospital in the Palestinian territories to be awarded the Joint Commission International (JCI) accreditation. The Hospital Group is the leading education and research institution working to build capacity and generate data on the prevalence of blindness, which eventually informs our program operations in the prevention of avoidable blindness in Palestine.

Launched in 2006, the globally renowned António Champalimaud Vision Award is the largest award in all fields of Vision, recognizing leadership in both Scientific Discovery and Humanitarian Impact. The Foundation, constituted at the bequest of the late Portuguese industrialist António Champalimaud, is based in Lisbon, Portugal, but its action in several fields spans the globe.

Under the Chairmanship of Prof. Alfred Sommer, the International Jury Panel comprises world leaders in ophthalmology, research and global public health, in addition to prominent individuals in the field of international development and outstanding scientists in fundamental research and biomedical sciences such as, Susumu Tonegawa, a Japanese scientist who was the sole recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1987; Amartya Kumar Sen, an Indian economist and philosopher, who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences; and Gullapalli Nageswara Rao, an Indian Ophthalmologist, and founder of the L. V. Prasad Eye Institute.

The Ceremony was held at the premises of the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal on the 6th of September 2023.