Cubadebate

Traducción especial para Cubadebate de Damaris Garzón.

Havana, 11 March (AIN) - More than 1.5 million people from 35 countries, including Cuba, have benefited from Operation Miracle, a program of ophthalmic rehabilitation sponsored for free by the governments of the island and Venezuela.

Of the 1.5 million people, over 331,000 are foreign patients, 266,743 of which underwent surgery at Cuban ophthalmologic centres, discloses the website CubaCoopera, maintained by the Cuban Foreign Affairs Office.

The remainder of these complex operations were carried out in 60 ophthalmologic centres, with 91 surgical teams, donated by Jose Marti's homeland to Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Panama, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Uruguay, Mali and Angola.

Likewise, Peru, St Lucia, St Vincent and Grenadines and Suriname benefited from similar interventions.

According to the World Health Organization's estimates, there are over 37 million people in the world who are blind due to preventable causes. Over 1,5 million are children under 16.

Blindness rates vary and are linked to the economic development of each country. In developed nations this disease only affects 0.25% of the population; however in nations where the economy is weak and healthcare is of poor quality, blindness can affect up to 1% of the population.

In the so-called Third World, the main causes of blindness are cataract, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, infectious disease such as trachoma and oncocercosis, and deficiency in the intake of vitamin A.

There are other ophthalmic conditions such as pterygium, ptosis and estrabismus which also affect large sectors of the population, both children and adults.

On July 5th 2004, the leader of the Cuban Revolution Fidel Castro, along with Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, signed and agreement to initiate this programme of international aid.