Hundreds to benefit from Venezuela vision programme

A team of medical professionals from Venezuela is due to engage in a week long surgical mission for persons in St Vincent and the Grenadines with vision problems.

Some 400 persons with visual impairment stand to benefit from this new stage of the Venezuela Miracle Mission programme that will run from February 8-14 at several locations across the state.
A release from the embassy of the Bolavarian Republic of Venezuela stated that the Venezuelan ophthalmologists will travel to SVG “to conduct free Visual testing with the aim of helping persons with limited resources who have vision problems, mainly caused by cataracts and Pterygium”.

Medical professionals at the planning meeting to discuss the new Venezuelan eye care programme.

Head of the Venezuela Mission, Francisco Pérez Santana, along with Cuthbert Knight, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health and his team met to determine the logistical needs and work agenda of the Venezuelan ophthalmologists .

Pérez Santana said the mission will be carried out in four stages involving four Venezuelan doctors.

“The first is the visual diagnosis to determine the needs of the patient; the second phase is the selection of patients who will do the exams required for the pre-operative phase; the third is the surgical intervention and, finally, the post-operative evaluation of the patient”, the Embassy explained.

Testing will take place from 9 a.m. at the following locations:

• Sunday, February 9th: Kingstown Clinic
• Monday, February 10th: Georgetown Medical Complex
• Tuesday, February 11th: Buccament PolyClinic
• Wednesday, February 12th: Bequia
• Thursday, February 13th: Mesopotamia
• Friday, February 14th: Chateaubelair

In Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, through the co-operation program between member countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – Peoples’ Trade Agreement (Alba-TCP), the Mission has carried out 310 surgical interventions on persons mainly with cataracts and pterygium.

Perez Santana said this new cycle of the Mission is carried out within the framework of the re-promotion of the Petrocaribe Regional Integration Agreement, ordered by the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and has as its final objective, to assist 1,998 patients from the five countries that make up this agreement.

The Miracle Mission programme was launched in 2004 by then president, the late Hugo Chavez, and saw scores of Vincentians travel to Cuba for eye surgeries.