Reverse Linkage

54 REVERSE LINKAGE Additionally, with the financial support of IsDB, ATCT has dispatched more than 450 doctors and medical tech- nicians to sub-Saharan African countries through various support missions in the fight against blindness. The medical expertise is provided by Nadi Al Bassar, the North African Centre for Sight and Visual Science. A South-South Cooperation success story In Tunisia, the fight against cataracts and the prevention of avoidable blindness began in the early 1980s with the support of the government and NAB, an NGO founded by a group of volunteer Tunisian ophthalmologists who launched a series of treatment campaigns to fight against the preva- lence of cataracts. The campaign began in Tunisia and later extended to some African countries with high presentations of glaucoma, trachoma and cataracts. The first campaign in Tunisia resulted in an average of 2,000 surgeries per year. The campaign was then exported first to Niger, then to several countries including Chad, Djibouti, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Palestine, Senegal, South Africa and Sudan. The results achieved between 2003 and 2012 include: • The sight of 13,000 patients restored • 44,523 specialised medical consultations performed • Hundreds of eye care personnel, ophthalmologists and technicians trained • 500 surgeries organized every week • 1,000 to 1,500 consultations held every week. Second dialogue meeting among IsDB member countries’ technical cooperation agencies Post-surgery precinct, Mozambique Image: ATCT Image: ATCT Cataract operation, Ivory Coast Image: ATCT