Charity targets child blindness
Published: October 13, 2005
A UK charity has pledged to track down and treat 10,000 children in Bangladesh who are blind due to cataracts.
Sight Savers said that cataracts are the biggest cause of childhood blindness in Bangladesh - despite being normally associated with old age in the UK.
On World Sight Day, the charity said that it aimed to treat 10,000 youngsters in the country by 2008, before their chance to see was lost forever.
Sight Savers have already carried out 3,000 operations to remove cataracts and implant an intraocular lens in youngsters’ eyes to help them see.
Actress Joanna Lumley has travelled to Bangladesh to see how the charity is searching every village in the world’s most densely-populated country to find children who may benefit from cataract surgery. She said: “I followed one five-year-old boy to witness his journey from blindness to sight.
“Arif’s family survive on just 40p a day, but even if they had been able to afford treatment, they had no idea that surgery might be able to give their boy sight. I will never forget the moment his bandage came off and he could see for the first time ever.
“Now I’m back home, I still can’t quite believe that surgery on a child like Arif can cost as little as £27.”
World Sight Day is hoping to raise awareness of the plight of the 37 million people who are blind around the world. But it is estimated that 75% of these could see with simple, cost-effective interventions.
Dr Caroline Harper, chief executive of Sight Savers International, said: “The poorest countries of the world carry 90% of blindness and every five seconds another person goes blind. Around 60% of children die within a year of going blind and every minute another child loses sight.
“The Bangladesh Child Cataract Campaign aims to transform life for the 10,000 children who are blind through cataracts by giving them the surgery that will enable them to see. The challenge is to find them before it’s too late for the brain to learn how to see.”
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