Venezuela: Over One Million Eye Surgeries in Eight Years

Operation Miracle, a humanitarian social program created by the  governments of Cuba and Venezuela, has made it possible to carry out over one million eye surgeries in the South American nation over the last eight years.

“We’re operating some 5,000 patients a week, the same amount of patients who benefited annually in Venezuela before the beginning of the program”, said national coordinator Manuel Pacheco, cited by the Venezuelan News Agency.

Operation Miracle began to be implemented in July, 2004, to take care of patients of scant economic resources who had eye problems.

At first, patients traveled to Havana, where more than 200,000 were operated on in one year, while the Venezuelan government set in motion an investment plan to re-foster these services in different hospitals of the Bolivarian country.

Since 2005 to date, within the context of that mission, over 33,000 patients have been seen in Venezuela, coming from Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Chile, Paraguay and Argentina, while arrangements to benefit the population of Curacao advance.