Cataract surgery for Lae

The Lae International Hospital (now being managed by the Pacific International Hospital), has collaborated with the Laila Foundation – an NGO aiming at providing eye care to the people of PNG.

60 patients have registered for free cataract surgery under this campaign.

“After the release of the RAAB 2017 report, we felt we had to aggressively scale-up our efforts at providing basic eyecare to the entire population of Papua New Guinea,” said Dr Amyna Sultan, one of the core member of the not-for-profit Laila Foundation. 

Collaborating with the Lae International Hospital , the team has been aggressively reaching out to churches (e.g. Holy Spirit Parish, Christ the King, St Steven, St Marys, All Saints, etc), district health centres, private clinics and even patients from the Angau Hospital.

The campaign also reached out to people working in companies like Hornibrooks, BSP, PNG Power, Swire Shipping & UMW.

All the screening has been completely free-of-charge.

In Lae alone, more than 100 people have been diagnosed with cataract and more than 40 require pterygium-correctional procedures.

“Avoidable Blindness” is a major cause of worry in the country of Papua New Guinea where people choose to go blind and stay blind, purely out of ignorance, rather than getting themselves screened and have relatively inexpensive procedures to nip any potential trouble in the bud.

A team, including an experienced ophthalmologist from the Pacific International Hospital, Port Moresby, have flown down on the 7th of April (incidentally, World Health Day – with the appropriate theme – Universal Health Coverage ) to the Lae International Hospital to perform these surgeries.

For more details of this program, the team can be reached at drbalathandan@pihpng.com or (675) 427 7133

Author: 
Press release