Barrett Haik, MD, Hamilton Professor of Ophthalmology and director of the Hamilton Eye Institute at University of Tennessee Health Science Center died at his home in New Orleans.
He was instrumental in the formation of, and subsequent growth of the Hamilton Eye Institute, helping it become one of the top ten eye clinics in the Unied States .
Haik also built the ophthalmic oncology service at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which is dedicated to treating children with ophthalmic tumors. Ralph S. Hamilton, MD told The Commercial Appeal, “Twenty years ago, 90 percent of children that had retinoblastoma, 90 percent of those children died . . . now 90 percent of them live. That really is his legacy, I’d say.”
Haik made tremendous strides in the fight against retinoblastoma, a pediatric eye cancer that once took the lives of 90 percent of children in developing nations who were afflicted with it. Through Haik's international outreach initiatives to establish centers of excellence throughout the developing world, that mortality rate is now under 10 percent in many countries
Every six months he traveled to Panama to operate field clinics to help the poorest of poor. He felt that identifying retinoblastoma in children was paramount to saving their lives. He lectured around the world and traveled to the Middle East, Asia, and South America to teach physicians how to identify and treat pediatric ocular cancers. Haik served on the Board of the Eye Foundation of America, founded by his father and based in New Orleans.