AN international non-profit organisation devoted to fighting and treating preventable blindness has donated supplies and equipment valued at K2,675,000 to the eye department at North Okkalapa General Hospital.

The equipment donated by Paris-based Helen Keller International (Europe) includes intro-ocular lenses and sutures used in cataract surgery and will enable the department to begin operations at its eye ward.

The donation was handed over by Dr Roy Tjiong, the deputy country director of Helen Keller International (Indonesia) to the hospital’s medical superinten - dent, Dr Mya Thaung, on June 20.

Dr Tjiong said the donation to the hospital in Yangon’s northern suburbs would enable patients in the area to avoid having the travel to Yangon Eye Hospital in Tarmwe township for treatment.

He also praised the quality of Myanmar ophthalmologists.

“I am very satisfied with the quality of Myanmar ophthalmologists; they are improving all the time. Some of the secondary eye centres (in the states and divisions) perform more than 2500 cataract operations annually,” he said.

Dr Tjiong, who arrived on June 19 for a seven-day visit, also travelled to Nyaung-U, Pakokku, Myaing, Monywa and Sagaing to observe treatment provided at eye care centres and attended a meeting of ophthalmologists in Mandalay in June 23 and 24.

Dr Aung Kyaw Win, an ophthalmologist at the Eye Bank at Yangon Eye Hospital, who accompanied Dr Tjiong on the trip, said he had checked the condition of equipment donated to eye care centres by Helen Keller International during the past four years.

Helen Keller International was founded in 1915.

It is named after an American women who overcame a childhood illness that left her blind and deaf to achieve academic distinction before devoting her life to helping blind and deaf-blind people.