Healthy Eyes Initiative comes up with remarkable achievements on World Sight Day

Egypt has over the last period spearheaded several health initiative with special focus on sight issues. On the World Sight Day, Egypt’s “Healthy Eyes Initiative” launched an infographic about its “remarkable achievements.”

About 180,000 Egyptians underwent check up in 17 governorates under the “Healthy Eyes Initiative” for ditching causes of blindness.

Moreover, 200,000 cornea operations were conducted within the framework of the initiative with each operation costing 25,000 to 30,000 pounds. Over 14,000 eye operations were conducted under the initiative.

The initiative – under the aegis of the cabinet- aimed mainly to spread awareness among people, especially in the villages, about means of protecting themselves from the causes of blindness or poor vision, while highlighting the importance of early checkup to ensure receiving needed treatment in proper time.

The initiative also aimed at protecting at least 4.7 million Egyptians from vision problems within three years and declaring Egypt free from blindness causes in 2020 in line with the World Health Organization plan and the directives of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi.

The initiative was launched by Sona3 El Kheir Foundation in tandem with Orchidia.

This is not the sole initiative in Egypt to combat causes of blindness and poor vision because President Abdel Fattah El Sisi has also launched Noor Al Hayat to help poor people undergo eye checkup.

Noor Al Hayat aims at examining 10 million students at the primary education stage and 2 million of most needy people in addition to providing a million medical glasses, carrying out 250،000 eye surgeries, reintegrating and empowering the visually impaired people.

The initiative was bankrolled by “Tahya Misr Fund” (or Long Live Egypt Fund).

Noor Al Hayat and Healthy Eyes initiatives came to be consistent with the World Sight Day’s theme this year “Let’s pledge to make Vision First!”. More than a billion people cannot see well, because they don’t have access to glasses. Over 3 out of 4 of the world’s vision impaired are avoidably.The World Sight Day,  marked on October 10, sought this year to find solutions to ensure that everyone, everywhere has access to sight.

The two Egyptian initiatives were part of several overtures for moving ahead toward the Sustainable Development Goals, especially SDG 3 on health and well-being.

President Abdel Fattah El Sisi has also launched “100 million health” initiative which aimed mainly at eliminating Hepatitis Virus C. The success of this initiative has led to extending the overture to several African countries, especially as Egypt is the current chair of the African Union.

Egypt has been accelerating efforts to improve health conditions in line with the Sustainable Development Goals.