In 2006, Professor Gerd Auffarth of Heidelberg University Eye Hospital in Germany was permitted to visit the country. He is one of the few Western surgeons to have carried out eye surgery in North Korea. Before he arrived in Pyongyang, he was authorized to do just five surgeries but once he reached the University Hospital he found that he could do seventeen: one perforating keratoplasty using donor tissue he had brought from Germany, three scleral-fixated secondary IOL implantations, and thirteen phacoemulsification procedures with IOL implants.