Together We Stand

[ 70 ] DA’s partnership with BIF started in the early 1990s when the founder of DA, Dr Abdul Rahman Al Sumait, gave a lecture about charity work in Africa. He emphasized communities’ poverty, ignorance and absence of basic medical care, pointing out that there was a severe shortage and a huge demand, and that more should be done in Africa. Among the audience was Dr Adel Al Rushood from BIF, and the two had a conversation asking, “Why don’t we do something for eye care in Africa?” Soon after that lecture, a field visit to some African coun- tries was organized and a decision was taken to conduct two free eye camps: one in Tanzania and the other in Niger for the first time ever. Both camps were conducted in September 1991. Thanks to a strong publicity campaign, the number of patients exceeded expectations and heavy security measures and organization procedures were implemented. Thousands of patients were screened and given medicines or glasses. A total of 269 eye-restoring surgeries were performed in the first camp, and more than 311 surgeries the second time around. The results were exceptional, and the reaction of the public and government officials was very encouraging. The opportunity of partnership started with these two camps, at a time when the concept of eye camps or outreach eye services was almost unknown in most of the sub-Saharan area of Africa. As time passed, DA developed more infrastruc- tures and a widely spreading network that covered most of the African region through field offices and multipurpose centres. A crucial step was taken then when DA and BIF decided to join forces and partner with a ‘know-how’ organization dedi- cated to the eradication of blindness in third world countries, making full use of BIF’s skilful human resources in blindness control and DA’s good administrative and field presence. The agreement between the two organizations consisted of DA taking care of the entire local field logistics including official approvals, licences for the medical teams, proposing and rehabilitating the venue for the eye camp, dealing with the media, security and all internal expenses. BIF conducted the technical and medical issues related to patient care from screening to post-operation follow-up. Over the last two-and-a-half decades, through this partner- ship, we have managed to conduct 131 eye camps that covered 24 different African countries. More than 600,000 patients were examined and/or treated. More than 43,000 sight-restoring surgeries, mostly cataract removal with intra-ocular lens implan- tation, were performed by highly skilled surgeons, and 141,819 pairs of spectacles were dispensed. The cost of running these free eye camps exceeded US$6.5 million. The programme, which started with two camps in 1991, reached 36 camps in 2015. This teamwork has also borne fruit in the inauguration of a base eye hospital in Niamey, Niger in 2004. The hospital treats almost 5,000 people per year with complicated eye conditions that cannot be handled in the eye camps. Routine eye patients from every region in Niger are also received and managed in this set-up. The hospital runs on a self-sustained concept and provides services at very low charges given the dramatic economic situation of communities and scarce resources of the government to develop good health services for the population. At present both organizations are working on two mega- projects of a 25-bed eye hospital in Maradi city in the south of Niger, and another one in N’djamena, Tchad. Both projects are estimated to cost around US$5 million. They will hope- fully serve not only these regions, but also the surrounding countries such as Nigeria, Cameroun and Benin. This partnership has a tremendous impact on all aspects of life for the cured patients. In African societies, any blind person has a child as a guide, and this leads to thousands of children being prevented from going to school. As they are obliged to remain in the service of the handicapped member of the family for many years, these children are unable to attend class regularly and many do not enrol at all. The programme has helped to reduce this number considerably, of which a high percentage are girls. The DA team and BIF doctor visit a patient’s home for his test, as he is unable to visit the camp Image: Majed Sultan AL Za’abi DA and BIF’s eye camps in Africa Source: BIF/DA Country Eye camps Country Eye camps Niger 18 Ghana 5 Togo 11 Ethiopia 3 Burkina Faso 10 Sierra Leone 3 Benin 9 Uganda 3 Guinea 9 Nigeria 2 Tchad 9 Somalia 2 Gambia 8 Djibouti 1 Sudan 8 Eritrea 1 Tanzania 8 Kenya 1 Mali 6 Malawi 1 Senegal 6 Mauritania 1 CAR 5 Rwanda 1 Total camps 131 Total cost US$6,550,000 T ogether W e S tand