A new initiative to combat blindness and establish a rehabilitation centre for the visually impaired in Bahrain was announced yesterday (March 10) by Standard Chartered Bank.

The $500,000 facility is part of the bank's global initiative ‘Seeing is Believing,’ in which it has committed to raise $100 million by 2020 for a programme launched in 2003, said a report in the Gulf Daily News (GDN), our sister publication.

An agreement to establish the new centre has been signed by Health Minister Sadiq Al Shehabi and the Prevention of Blindness Union (PBU) founder and chairman Prince Abdul Aziz bin Ahmed Abdul Aziz Al Saud, in the presence of Standard Chartered Bank's corporate and institutional clients and financial institutions head Abdulla Bukhowa.

The project is being funded by the bank and will be implemented by PBU in collaboration with Salmaniya Medical Complex.

It will involve the establishment of a rehabilitation programme that will help both children and adults.

Work is due to commence next month and the new centre is expected to be ready by the end of March 2017.

Services will include counselling, low vision assessments, provision of low vision aids and outreach services to schools for the blind and other institutions.

It will also be responsible for the retraining of ophthalmologists, optometrists, experts, technicians and social workers.

So far the Seeing is Believing initiative has covered over 65 million people through medical interventions, health education and improved access to eye care in their communities, with over 3.4 million cataract operations and surgical interventions and around 12.3 million screened globally. - TradeArabia News Service