The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Indian surgeons to perform free eye surgeries in Ghana next month

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, May 01, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Indian surgeons to perform free eye surgeries in Ghana next month

Staff Reporter

Doctors would operate on 900 patients with various ailments

CHENNAI: A team of eye surgeons from India will perform free cataract surgeries in Ghana in Africa from next month.

During their 18-day stay, the doctors would operate on 900 patients with eye ailments, including cataract. The team comprises V. Panneerselvam of Arasan Hospital, Erode, and three surgeons and four paramedics.

The initiative was taken by the Rotary Club of Madras after deliberations with the Rotary Club of Accra West and the health authorities in Ghana. Arulmozhi Varman, an eye surgeon in Chennai and a member of the Rotary Club of Madras, will lead the team.

The club would bear the expenses of the consumables needed for the surgeries, costing about Rs. 3.5 lakhs, while the surgeons would carry their own instruments and accessories.

The Ghanaian Health Ministry would provide accommodation, food, travel facilities and security to the team of doctors, said M.C. Shanker, president-elect of the club.

About 8,000 Ghanaians in Accra, capital city, were awaiting treatment for eye ailments, as hospital facilities there were very limited, the club said in a release. The Ghanaian health authorities made a request to conduct 1,200 surgeries.

Over two per cent of the population in villages and urban slums were blind and the Government had drawn up a strategy to target cataract, trachoma, onchocerciosis, blindness in children, refractive errors and low vision.

Appreciating the club's efforts, Supriya Sahu, Joint Secretary for Health, invited the club and other organisations to join the Tamil Nadu Government in blindness control programmes in the State. The Rotary could involve themselves in screening of schoolchildren for refractive errors or in outreach programmes in interior and tribal areas where medical care was not effective.

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