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Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Cabaero: Cebu's own eye bank
By Nini B. Cabaero
Beyond 30
After being married for 46 years, they are once again pregnant. They are expecting a “super baby” who would have the ability to restore the eyesight of thousands of blind people in Visayas and Mindanao.
Frank and Elizabeth Yang marked their 46th wedding anniversary last week. Instead of holding an anniversary party, they held Sunday night a soft launch of their new “baby” - Cebu’s own eye bank.
To be called the Lions Medical Eye Bank of the Philippines, the project is a product of conjugal initiative and the support of many people, who mostly belong to the different Lions clubs in Cebu and abroad.
The project now has some $100,000 in donations from around the world: the Lions International donated $38,000 and the East Virginia Lions Eye Bank in the United States gave another $25,000, while donations from among Lions clubs in Cebu have so far reached $40,000.
Ulysses Dorotheo, a neuro-ophthalmologist of the Cebu Doctors’ University Hospital, said there are 45 million blind people worldwide as per 2000 statistics. This number is expected to increase to 75 million by year 2020. The unfortunate thing is that most of them, or eight out of 10, have preventable or curable blindness.
There is a global initiative for the elimination of avoidable blindness called the “Vision 2020: The right to sight” that encourages community participation in the worldwide effort. This endeavor of the Lions clubs in Cebu is along that line.
An eye bank here would greatly contribute to restoring eyesight of many in the Visayas and Mindanao regions. At present, there is only one eye bank in the Philippines and this is located at the Philippine General Hospital in Manila.
Mrs. Yang, Lions’ multiple district chairperson for sight conservation and work with the blind, said the project is now in its equipment acquisition and site preparation phase. An agreement has been signed with the Cebu Doctors Hospital where the facility will be located at its premises along Osmeña Blvd. The facility would focus on vision restoration through corneal transplant. Charity cases would be accepted once the project becomes operational.
To follow would be the advocacy and operations phase when the bank would start accepting pledges to donate cornea where donors, while alive, can commit to giving their cornea once they die.
As Dr. Dorotheo said, no words can describe how it feels for a blind person to regain eyesight.
And, there can be no better and more meaningful way to celebrate a wedding anniversary than with the announcement of a dream coming true for the community.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (May 2, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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