Bright eyes for children

October 05, 2011 | 14:18

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Yesterday, Standard Chartered Bank (Vietnam), in conjunction with the Fred Hollows Foundation and Hanoi Eye Hospital, organised a ceremony at Hanoi Eye Hospital to celebrate the World Sight Day under this year’s theme “Bright eyes for children”.

World Sight Day is a global initiative of World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Agency for Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) to focus global attention on blindness, visual impairment and aim to eliminate avoidable blindness by 2020. It is held on the second Thursday of October every year. This is the 9^th consecutive year that World Sight Day is being observed in Vietnam.

This event is a part of the global campaign “Seeing is Believing” – an initiative of Standard Chartered Bank. In Vietnam, Standard Chartered Bank has been partnering with the Fred Hollows Foundations to run “Vietnam Urban Childhood Blindness Prevention Project”, as part of the “Seeing is Believing” campaign since 2004.

With the support from Hanoi Eye Hospital, it targets to provide eye-care services for children between 1-15 years old. The project has been successful in restoring sight for children and there are plans to expand the programme to reach out to more children in Vietnam.

There are about 314 million visually impaired people worldwide with blindness and low vision, in which there is an estimated two million Vietnamese who are blind.

In Vietnam, there are about 23,000 children who are blind in both eyes, and this number keeps on increasing. Particularly in Hanoi, there are about 32,000 blind people, which is equivalent with more than 0.5 per cent of Hanoi population.

From October 10-14, 2011 Hanoi Eye Hospital will provide free eyes screening for refraction errors for children under 15 years old and free eye surgeries for visually impaired children in Hanoi, who are requested by doctors.

By Song Ngoc

vir.com.vn

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