Standard Chartered Bank has injected over $1 million in Zimbabwe towards sight restoration activities over the next three years and over 70 000 adults and 6 500 children are expected to benefit from the initiative.
By STAFF REPORTER
This comes as Zimbabwe today commemorates the annual World Sight Day, whose objective is to focus global attention on blindness and vision impairment.
Since beginning of the year, Christian Blind Mission (CBM) in partnership with Council for the Blind and the Health and Child Care ministry has been implementing the Seeing is Believing (SiB) project funded by Standard Chartered Bank and CBM.
In a statement, the bank said the SiB would scale up the provision of quality eye care services through capacity building of eye health workforce, improvement of infrastructure, provision of equipment and consumables at Sekuru Kaguvi Hospital (children’s eye unit), Norton Eye Hospital and Sakubva Eye Hospital.
The bank said this would ensure that eye care services are inclusive and in line with the National Eye Health Strategy (2014-2018). The Sekuru Kaguvi Hospital children’s eye unit was successfully refurbished and future developments will see the reconstruction of the Norton eye unit operating theatre and refurbishment of the Sakubva eye unit to allow for independent theatre space.
Standard Chartered staff were involved through the employee volunteering programme in the development of a patient management system (database) which will allow better management of the referral of children with eye problems from the north-east provinces to Sekuru Kaguvi Hospital.
Standard Chartered Bank has also partnered with Morgenster Mission Hospital for the past three years in carrying out eye camps to the disadvantaged communities in Zimbabwe. Over 450 people have benefitted from the free cataract operations that have been offered in Chikombedzi, Chivhu and Chiweshe areas.
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Globally over 3 million people have had their sight restored through the Standard Chartered Bank’s SiB initiative. Since 2003 when SiB was launched, to August of this year 3,5 million sights had been restored through cataract operations and surgical interventions.
A collaboration between the bank, the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness and leading eye health organisations, the initiative has committed to raise $100 million between 2003 and 2020 for the programme through fundraising and bank matching.
“The bank commits to match all donations towards Seeing is Believing until the $100 million goal is met. As at August 2015, $82 million had been raised since 2003,” said the bank.
Funds raised for SiB are invested in eye health projects, ranging from providing comprehensive eye health to innovative solutions in poor and underprivileged communities within the bank’s footprint.
