To achieve healthy eyesight for people of the greater Rangpur and adjacent sub-districts of Dinajpur in northwest Bangladesh, Islamic Relief Worldwide Bangladesh initiated Eye Sight Rehabilitation Project.
Arrange patients screening program to identify cataract patients
– General eye care services
– Provide operation services for cataract patients through partner hospital and
– Awareness on eye care and eye treatment
– Counseling and motivation
The project successfully completed its last phase started from 15th July’2010 and continued
Major activities of the project includes –
During this period, the project provided cataract operation facilities for 1012 peoples instead of its initial target 800, refractive error corrected for 603 peoples and facilitated general eye care and treatment awareness among 12459 peoples irrespective of gender, race and religion.
Un-operated cataract is the main cause of blindness and low vision. The cataract surgical coverage for blind eyes due to operable cataract was notably low.
Managing of transport cost, operation and medicine cost are big factors for the poor households of proposed rural areas when they experience eyesight problem. As a result, many people force to live either with blindness or extreme low vision and as consequence socio economically become excluded, extremely vulnerable and many of them force to adopt immoral trafficking as begging.
In these circumstances, rural community based cataract-screening programmes and free cataract operation support are highly important for the rural poor and extreme poor peoples.
Blindness severely affects people’s life and livelihood. Peoples are expecting continuation of this project and extended its coverage to reach more peoples experiencing cataract blindness.