The Ho Chi Minh City Sponsoring Association for Poor Patients plans to establish an eye bank to facilitate free eye operations for the poor and enlarge the network of participating hospitals providing free heart surgeries to poor children in the 2009-14 period, acting chairman Le Thanh Hai has said.

Speaking at the fourth congress of the association held in HCM City on Dec. 23, Hai said the establishment of the eye bank would help expand the “Bringing sight for the poor blind” programme and ensure 30,000 surgeries could be performed every year.

He also listed the other programmes it would carry out in the next five years under an overarching plan titled “All for poor patients” that seeks to continue to save lives and relieve the pain of poor and disabled people in 35 cities and provinces.

With the support of VinaCapital Group, East Meets West Foundation, and individual donors, an ongoing programme titled “Save the lives of 1,000 children born with heart disease” will be expanded to include more hospitals to the existing eight.

All disabled people living in HCM City will be donated wheelchairs at the rate of 5,000 per year.

The “Sound and voice for the deaf and dumb children” programme will provide 2,000 hearing aids every year.

The “Smile for the young” programme will provide free surgery to children with cleft palates, while the “Free meals for poor patients” programme will build a kitchen in every hospital to provide free meals to poor patients.

In the last five years, the association provided more than 181,000 free eye operations, restoring vision for more than 300,000 blind people, including nearly 4,900 operations for Laotians and 18,000 for Cambodians.
A total of 37,000 children with cleft palates received free surgery in the period./.