The Calpe-based NGO Visió Sense Fronteres is planning to carry out a new campaign for the prevention and treatment of avoidable blindness. In this case, it will travel for the first time to the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, one of the largest in the world, housing nearly 300,000 refugees and asylum seekers.
The expedition will travel to this camp from 10 to 21 April and will be made up of three ophthalmologists, two nurses, an anesthetist, three optometrists and a volunteer. They have been helped by the humanitarian organisation Embracing the World in Kenya, as well as by two local nurses who have been in charge of finding patients affected by cataracts. There are two hospitals in the camp, but they do not have any ophthalmology specialists, only one nurse with some knowledge of the subject.
The Kakuma refugee camp, located in north-western Kenya, is home to refugees and asylum seekers mainly from South Sudan and Somalia, but also from other African countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Sudan and Ethiopia, most of whom have fled war, violence and persecution in East Africa and the Horn of Africa.
Visió Sense Fronteres expects to operate on 300 eyes and ‘thus give these people the opportunity, through a simple operation accessible to any citizen of the first world, to recover their vision and improve their quality of life as much as possible,’ said the coordinator of this NGO, Isabel Signes.
This campaign once again has the collaboration of Calpe City Council.