TEH Provides Free Eye Care Services to Cambodian People on the WSD

Tuesday, 18 October 2011

To welcome the World Sight Day (WSD), Caritas-Takeo Eye Hospital (TEH) provided free eye care services to Cambodian people for three days from 12-14 October 2011 in Takeo province. One more important theme stands behinds the WSD is to raise awareness on the eye issues and eye health to Cambodian people.

There were 842 patients coming to get consultation while the other 104 got operation for these three days. 82% of the patients are cataract.

On the first day of the WSD, The eye hospital provided eye health care education for 30 minutes to all the patients before opening the ceremony and treating people.

WSD was opened the remark from Sr. Myra, representative of Caritas Cambodia-TEH and presided over by Mr. Ung Sambath, deputy director of Disability Action Council –DAC, Mr. Sim Ang , deputy director of provincial of social Affair and director of Take provincial Health Department, Mr. Hem Sareth.

Cambodian people were very excited and glad that TEH provided them free services for three days.

Hong Bronn, 79, an eye patient from Tram Kak district, Takeo province said “I’m very poor, I could not afford to pay for the treatment so I’m very pleased that today I could get free eye health services from TEH. All TEH staffs are friendly and helpful.TEH is very famous for its best services.”

This 79 year-old woman is Pteryguim. She could not see something as usual, however, after getting treatment from TEH she could see everything like before. “First I didn’t believe in TEH but after I saw many people in my village recover from their eye problem because of this eye hospital, I started to trust it and came to get the treatment. I will never forget TEH who helped me see the world again.”

Similarly to Hong Bronn, Kim Samphors, 28, a volunteer for Cambodian Development Mission for Disability admired TEH a lot. She said it is hard to get free and best service from any hospitals but TEH does. Samphors believes in TEH 100% because she saw all the patients who got treatment from here got recover.

“My nephew is often teary and he could not see something clearly so I brought him here. He is now being better after seeing the doctor twice. I’m very pleased about Caritas-THE’s hard work. All its staffs work well and have good communication with all kind of people,” said Samphors.

Takeo Eye Hospital, 50 miles south of Phnom Penh, is committed to reduce preventable and treatable cases of blindness. The eye hospital was created to respond to the severe shortage of eye doctors and eye nurses in Cambodia. It provides the consultation, Surgery, Refractive Error, Low Vision, Optical Shop, training & researching and community eyes health.

TEH opens from Monday to Friday morning from 7:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m. and from1:30 p.m.-5:00 p.m. in the afternoon. However, it provides unlimited services for the emergency cases. TEH has been started since 1997. Moreover, according to its statistic in September 2011 shows that so far there are 257.206 patients who came to get the consultation while there are 45.142 surgery patients. 85% of the patients are from Takeo province.