Piet Noë was born in Oudenaarde on July 25th, 1975.

He received his diploma in secondary education at the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwecollege of his hometown in 1993.

In 2000 he obtained his diploma in Medicine at the University of Ghent summa cum laude.

Afterwards, Dr. Piet Noë specialized in in Ophthalmology and attended training in various university hospitals in Antwerp, Ghent, Rotterdam and Paris.
In 2004 he obtained his diploma of specialist in Ophthalmology.

That Piet Noë would ever become a doctor was written in the stars: his father was a general practitioner in Oudenaarde, his brother and his sister are doctors and another sister who works as a pharmacist, medicine is deeply rooted in the genes of the Noë family.

“The fact that I wanted to work in a developing country was the result of my Christian conviction,” says Piet Noë. “If you want to do development work, Ophthalmology is a very useful specialization. You can achieve a lot with relatively few resources “.

After graduating in 2004, Dr Piet Noë went to Uganda and worked in a clinic for the German NGO Christian Blind Mission (CBM).
He then went to Rwanda to a hospital in Kabgayi, where he worked until February 2017 on a project of the Diocese of Kabgayi, which enjoys the support of CBM and Light for the World Belgium.

Together with his Rwandan colleague, Dr. Piet Noë did about 6,000 eye surgeries per year.

Afterwards he worked for a year as retinal surgeon at the Erasmus University Hospital in Rotterdam.

At the end of 2017 he moved to Rwanda on a permanent basis to build his own eye hospital, the ‘Rwanda Charity Eye Hospital’, near the capital Kigali. For Dr. Noë this project is the realization of a long-cherished dream in which he invested all his savings, and for which he received support from many friends, family and sympathizers.

The eye hospital will be officially opened on 18 November 2018, has 100 beds and will employ 35 people. In this hospital cataract operations will be carried out in the same way as other ophthalmic procedures. The doctor team will also treat patients with eye cancer.

“To make the blind see, creates much joy” said Dr. Piet Noë who can count on the support of the non-profit organization Light in the Dark-Rwanda for his project.

In November 2017, the dedicated ophthalmologist received the ‘Specialist of the Year’ Award for his humanitarian work in Rwanda by the ‘Artsenkrant’.

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