Opthalmology centre to open in Hue

Original Source THUA THIEN-HUE – The Health Ministry and the provincial authority of Thua Thien-Hue yesterday broke ground for the Hue Ophthalmology and Training Centre, a US$4 million addition to Hue Central Hospital. The centre is expected to significantly upgrade services to patients with severe eye illnesses. Funded by the Bermuda-headquartered NGO Atlantic Philanthropies and carried out by the East Meets West Foundation (EMW), the project is a humanitarian gift to the people of Hue and is expected to be completed by the end of 2009. The eye hospital addresses a critical need as blindness is widespread in Viet Nam, and several hundred thousand cases require surgery. Speaking at the ground-breaking ceremony, the director of Hue Central Hospital, Bui Duc Phu, said the four-storey building would include facilities equipped with state-of-the-art ophthalmology equipment for exams, diagnosis and operations as well as conference rooms and laboratories for training purposes. Hue Central is a teaching hospital and the ophthalmology department will train specialists who are capable of performing surgery to eradicate over 80 per cent of blindness in Viet Nam. Phu said EMW and AP had funded a project to build new facilities for the Hue Hospital’s Pediatrics Department which were brought into operation in 2003. Four years later, with funding from the same source, the $8.3 million Hue Cardiovascular Centre became operational at Hue Central Hospital, with 200 in-patient beds, four operating theaters and an intensive care unit. This year, 1,000 surgeries are expected to be performed at the centre. “East Meets West is working towards the goal of improving overall health care in Viet Nam while targeting specific sectors, and vision is clearly one of the most essential components to a person’s life,” said Mark Conroy, EMW country director. EMW also built the Hue University Learning Resource Centre, a modern library that has multimedia, seminar and study areas. The partnership between Atlantic Philanthropies and EMW has provided health and higher education infrastructure in several Vietnamese cities including Ha Noi and in Thai Nguyen and Quang Tri provinces since 1998 – VNS