Canadian donors, including Anglicans, Baptists and Roman Catholics, have contributed $800,000 towards the cost of a new $1.2 million eye hospital, inaugurated recently in Asuncion, Paraguay.
The contributions, made through CBM (formerly Christian Blind Mission), will go a long way towards providing affordable, accessible quality eye care for Paraguayans, CBM said in a press statement. “In Paraguay, there are more than 36,000 people who are blind, of which 60 per cent is preventable,” said CBM. “Most of the existing eye-care services are located in urban centres (90 per cent of ophthalmologists in Paraguay live in the capital city) and cater primarily to wealthy people.”
About 40 per cent of people in Paraguay live on less than $2 a day and there is a severe lack of affordable and accessible medical care, said CBM.
