Eye Centre to be built and equipped in Sévaré, Mali

Sévaré in the Republic of Mali is home to some 50,000 people. Our project is to set up, in collaboration with the diocese of Mopti, an eye centre that will provide eye care and treatment to blind persons, those suffering from eye diseases as well as visually impaired people. The target is to serve a population of well over 400,000 people living in the northern and western areas of the country. Establishing an eye clinic will provide ways of detecting eye diseases early on, giving proper treatment und preventing blindness. Persons who are blind and those facing blindness will be operated on at the clinic. Patients with eye problems will be treated, and operated on if necessary, as well as given the corrective lenses they need. General information about eye diseases, both their dangers and the possibilities to deal with them, will be offered to the people of the area.

A special target group will be children up to ten years of age, following research showing that about 44 percent of that age group suffer from trachoma, one of the causes of blindness in later life. An optical workshop will be integrated into the clinic manufacturing corrective lenses for people who have been operated on and those with visual impairments. An optical workshop is an essential part of an eye clinic as most patients, and many other persons as well, need glasses.

So far, adequate eye care services have not been available to the people of Sévaré and the Mopti area the nearest optical workshop being some 600 km away. The project comprises the construction and equipment of an eye clinic complete with operating area, wards, eye testing room and an optical workshop, as well as laundry facilities, sterilisation rooms, a garage, outdoor toilets, a kitchen, and an administrative section; there will be a wall surrounding the compound.
Training of local staff is to be given special weight.
Three-quarters of the funding will be by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, with one-quarter provided from donations to africa action / Germany.

The establishment in its entirety is meant to be self-supporting in the medium term. However, africa action will have to continue funding the following services:

• Donations from Germany will pay for cataract operations at 30 euros per operation for those who cannot afford the cost.
• Funding for visits to remote villages by eye doctors is to continue for it is there that the drama of going blind is at its most serious.

Please help us to make this project work. Please mention
Blindheitsbekämpfung im Sahel

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