The U.S. Atlantic Philanthropies (AP) and Australian Fred Hollows Foundation (FHF) have granted a combined $2.2 million to help improve training capacity of medical workers at the Hanoi-based Central Eye Hospital. The physicians are expected to serve a center for training community ophthalmology that will be established this year, Director of the hospital Do Nhu Hon was quoted by the Ha Noi Moi newspaper as saying. The hospital plans to provide free-of-charge eye surgeries for poor patients in some localities of Laos, including Vientiane. It also targets to offer surgeries for 170,000 cataract patients a year and eliminate trachoma in the country in 2012, Hon added. Vietnam identifies up to 85,000 new people with two-eye blindness and the same number with one-eye blindness due to cataract each year.
