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Sight First China Action Treats Cataract Patients in Qinghai
Medical experts in the national team of Sight First China Action moved Tuesday to farming and pastoral areas in northwest China's Qinghai Province to treat local cataract patients.
Sources with the provincial disabled persons' federation said that these experts will treat more than 800 cataract patients within a month. The current program is funded by the Red Cross of Canada. All 800 patients will be treated free of charge.
Li Hua, an official with the province's disabled persons' federation, said that since 1997, more than 8,000 cataract patients in the province have regained their eyesight with the help of the program. In the first half of this year, 614 patients were treated in the southern part of Qinghai, inhabited by Tibetans.
Sight First China Action is a program jointly funded by the Chinese Ministry of Health, the Disabled Persons' Federation of China and the International Association of Lions Clubs. Since 1997, more than 1.75 million cataract patients have been treated in China. Most of them live in economically under-developed areas in Qinghai and Yunnan provinces, and the Xinjiang Uygur and Tibet Autonomous Regions.
At present, China has about 4 million cataract patients, and the number is increasing by 400,000 annually.
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