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Created: Wednesday, 04 April 2018 12:32

This week marks Mandela Day in South Africa, and in honour of Madiba, Grace Vision has scheduled 67 free sight restoring cataract surgeries for impoverished communities in rural Eastern Cape.

Dr Claudine Lee from KZN has graciously volunteered her time and skills to perform most of the surgeries from Monday to Thursday, while a surgeon from the Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital will perform surgeries on Friday.

Sadly, this represents the tip of the iceberg, as far as clearing the cataract backlogue in rural Eastern Cape, but with the continued financial support of our donors, Grace Vision will keep working tirelessly to restore sight, dignity and life one person at a time.

Grace Vision provides free high quality primary eye care to the poorest region of the poorest province in South Africa.

The implementation of the Grace Vision Zithulele Centre of eye care excellence has brought a new level of eye care service to the rural community south east of Mthatha. The year 2014 saw the ongoing sustainable outreach into the communities who had lost all confidence in the existence of government eye care procedures.

The number of patients daily who come for eye examinations and treatment has in some cases increased fivefold. We have achieved one of our objectives, which was to re-establish confidence in the community that reliable eye care could be possible.

The year ending December 2015 saw a total of 6,782 patients screened; 2,320 pairs of glasses distributed; more than 4,500 bottles of eye drops were prescribed; 579 cataract patients identified, and 249 cases of cataract surgery performed.

We expect these numbers to increase substantially during the next year as confidence in the government clinic system returns to the region.