We Need Your Help!

See the Latest Report from Lions Club of Kathamndu Kirtipur

Kirtipur is a poor town just south of Kathmandu. The home of the original campus of Tribhuvan University, this area contains the ancient and crowded village of Kirtipur as well as many smaller, and even poorer, rural communities further south. Kirtipur Municipality is deprived of adequate health care facilities. There are no eye care facilities available to this section of population from government or public sector, except for the very occasional eye screening camps conducted by some non-governmental organizations (NGOs). There is one Kirtipur Hospital recently started by Kathmandu Model Hospital and one government health post delivering basic health care services to the people of Kirtipur. Internally, Kirtipur Municipality and neighboring villages are not well accessed by road. Most of these communities are far from road facilities.

Vision 2020 is a global initiative jointly launched by the World Health Organization and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness together with more than 20 international non-governmental organizations involved in eye care and prevention and management of blindness. Vision 2020 aims to help eliminate avoidable blindness by the year 2020. Lions Club of Kathmandu Kirtipur is committed to the national plan of action for eye care services and implementation of Vision 2020 concept of elimination of avoidable blindness. To fulfill the Vision 2020 concept, Lions Club of Kathmandu Kirtipur has decided to run a community based and ownership program, called Primary Eye Care Service Center in Kirtipur. With available funds (internal and external) and shown interest and commitment of the people of Kirtipur, the program will gradually extend its service. It is a totally independent and autonomous program that is run by community people.

The Primary Eye Care Service Center can provide basic and timely primary care service to the patients in all communities of Kirtipur to save the eye sight. It will advocate and educate the community people on prevention side. Lions Eye Care Centre organized four eye screening camps in Kirtipur Municipality in June 2007 and examined 777 patients and found 83 patients with operable cataracts. Sixty-one cataract surgeries were performed. From this figure, it seems that over 10% of the eye patients coming to eye camps are cases of operable cataract requiring sight restoring surgery.

The Center plays an important role in serving the poorest segments of the population in the most rural and semi urban people and underserved areas of Ilaka Number 10 (more than 12 Village Development Committees and 1 Kirtipur Municipality), Kathmandu District. This is where blindness hits communities the hardest. Most eye hospitals in Nepal are located in central Kathmandu and most of the remote village could not access the proper eye service. it means people don’t get hospital services. The best way to reach such population is by community based primary eye care service (outreach programs). These areas are those locations where establishing an eye hospital is not feasible.

See the latest report from Lions Club of Kathmandu Kirtipur.

For more information about this project, including status reports, see Eye Care Clinic or contact ANMF.
 


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Thank you!

November 2, 2010 11:57 AM