Two senior ophthalmologists are scheduled to visit Myanmar in December, in a trip organized by ORBIS Taiwan, to join a "flying hospital" program to treat some 250,000 Burmese suffering from blindness or other vision problems.
Dr. Liu Jung-hung (
World Sight Day, which falls on the second Thursday of October, is an annual activity regularly sponsored by ORBIS International, the WHO , the International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF), the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, the Lion's Club International, and 10 other public interest organizations from around the world.
Liu and Lu will be in Myanmar from Dec. 6-10, during ICDF Taiwan Week, mainly to train healthcare workers in the treatment and prevention of blindness to enable them to better care for their compatriots.
Of the 42 million people in Myanmar, about 252,000 suffer from blindness or severe vision problems. Nationwide, there are only 183 eye doctors, 32 optometrists and 150 ophthalmology nurses, Chien said.
ORBIS Taiwan, established in 2001, is an affiliate of ORBIS International, a non-profit organization dedicated to the prevention of blindness and saving the sight of the visually impaired.
According to Chien, there are 45 million blind people around the world and 135 million others with severe visual problems, 90 percent of whom live in countries with inferior medical resources.
In light of the quality medical services and the existence of a large number of professionally trained ophthalmologists in Taiwan, ORBIS International invited in August a number of eye doctors from the island to join its Orbis Flying Eye Hospital on a mission to Myanmar.
Mohan Jacob Thazhathu, chief operating officer of ORBIS International, who came to Taiwan in August for a promotional event, cited an estimate by the World Health Organization that blindness costs society some US$25 billion every year, with Southeast Asian countries bearing approximately US$5.6 billion of that burden.
The number of people suffering from blindness in the world can be stopped from increasing further by merely investing US$200 million per year in blindness prevention and treatment programs, he said.
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