Afghanistan's Ministry of Public Health, in conjunction with the World Health Organization, has opened 10 temporary eye clinics across the country to enable cataract operations to be performed.
Funded by a US$ 90 000 donation from the Kuwait Patients' Helping Fund Society, the plan is to carry out 2000 cataract surgeries by the end of the year.
"Visual impairment is treatable but poor people cannot afford it," Peter Graaff, WHO's Representative in Afghanistan, told the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), adding that cataract was a leading cause of blindness, even though surgery only costs US$ 45.
About 16 000 cataract surgeries are performed annually. This is enough to deal with new cases but not to clear the backlog of 200 000 cases, says WHO.
Every day about 70 people in Afghanistan lose their vision, at least in one eye, and almost half a million Afghans are completely blind, according to WHO. About 1.5 million Afghans are visually impaired, it says. Blindness imposes an economic burden of about US$ 100 million a year, according to WHO, which is not an inconsiderable sum for a country ranked second least developed in the world in 2009.
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WHO's eye care programme in Afghanistan
