Staffing

Dr. Lévi Kandeke

Medical Director

Dr. Lévi Kandeke was born in Burundi and completed his ophthalmic training at The University of Geneva, Switzerland. After a short period where he worked as a consultant in a specialized center for glaucoma at CHNO in Paris, France, he had decided to go back to his home country where there was a considerable need for eye care and became the country's very first eye surgeon. Dr. Lévi Kandeke is now a renowned ophthalmologist and surgeon-scientist at the University of Burundi. He is best known for his efforts to make eye health care accessible in the community: he had revolutionized eye care in his country by establishing a series of community eye centers across the country serving remote communities. The CEC is all self-financed through service fees and can provide a full range of services, including glasses for refractive error, drugs for minor conditions, and referral of complex and surgical cases to the ophthalmologist. More than 70,000 people are served each year. His innovations have been an inspiration to many, and ophthalmology has become one of the first selected choices in specialization for young physicians in his country. He is also the founder of CTSOE, the only tertiary child eye care center in a country where childhood blindness can be a death sentence. He is also the president of the Burundian Ophthalmology Society.