Retired eye doctor keeps commitment to missionary work
SAN FABIAN–For the past 28 years, this ophthalmologist who is celebrating his 75th birthday today, has treated and given renewed eyesight to 26,000 patients. All for free. And free of politics.
Dr. Guillermo de Venecia of barangay Bolasi ensures his patients are certified indigents whose eyes are blind from cataract, and could not really afford to undergo medical treatment/operation due to poverty.
Doctor Emong, as he is fondly known by his patients, sees to it that the beneficiaries undergo and pass rigid screening starting from the third week of November. The cataract operation starts from January to June when he is in the country. Normally, a cataract operation costs P40,000.
His charity work recipients are not only from Pangasinan, but also from Ilocos Sur, Mt. Province, La Union, Nueva Ecija, Nueva Vizcaya, Baguio, Tarlac and Zambales.
He has learned to love his place here where he, too, has been holdingclinic in the middle of a fishpond for the past eight years.
Twenty years ago, he was on a missionary work giving free cataract operation in as far as Aparri in northern Luzon to Cotabato in Mindanao.
Since then, he has been treating more than a thousand patients every year without any prodding from anyone.
“People have their own plans in life. This is my decision,” he said.
He said he feels fulfilled every time he sees a very poor blind patient given a new sight.
Over the years, his corps of volunteers assisting him has increased in number including retired doctors who have heard about his charitable mission.
Doctor Emong is the first cousin of House Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. (their fathers are siblings) but he said he does not want to get involved in “medical politics”, meaning accommodating patients recommended by politicians without screening them.
“Politicians can send their patients but it’s no guarantee that I will treat them. They should pass first the screening,” he said.
He graduated from the University of Sto. Tomas in Manila in 1954 and trained in ophthalmo-logy in Hamburg, Germany where his father, Policronio de Venecia, was the consul.
He worked thereafter as a professor in ophthalmology at the University of Wisconsin until he retired in 1996.
He said he will continue with his missionary work “until I die”.—EVA
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