Registered Charity: 1101246
CPA is proud to sponsor a small charity which has been curing blind people and training nurses to increase the number of cataract operations in and around Gondar, a remote town in Northern Ethiopia.
In a nutshell:
- In such a poor "hand to mouth" economy, blindness leads to increased poverty and death;
- The blind are unable to work and afford food... or become an economic drain on their families, most of who are barely surviving themselves;
- ...and yet interventions to cure or prevent blindness are among the cheapest and most cost effective of all health interventions at c£15 a time.
Interesting facts:
- There are only some 15 eye surgeons looking after the needs of some 60m people in rural Ethiopia;
- This compares to 1,000 in the UK plus support staff... where the prevalence of blindness and eye disease is not nearly so great;
- In the Gondar area alone there are an estimated 20,000 cataract blind.
Successes to date:
- Several nurses have been trained to undertake cataract surgery and equipment has been provided to allow many, many cases of blindness to be cured;
- Training curricula have been developed by GEES and recently adopted by the Ethiopian Health Ministry for use throughout Ethiopia.
If our dream comes true...
A 24 bed eye clinic will be constructed in Gondar to cure blindness... whilst at the same time creating a "centre of excellence" to train locally selected nurses to perform the range of relatively simple eye operations in centres throughout rural areas.
Feeling generous or require further information?
