Initiative to treat poor vision examines 10.6k students in Matrouh

CAIRO – 24 November 2019: The medical teams of the Nour Al-Hayah presidential initiative, which aims to treat school children suffering from vision problems, managed to examine 10,638 students in Matrouh governorate on the Mediterranean coast, according to media reports.

This comes as part of efforts seeking to examine 30,000 students in 151 schools in Matrouh.

President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi announced launching the initiative in January this year. It targets treating 5 million primary school students in the country, providing a million eyeglasses, and carrying out 250,000 eye surgeries.

The initiative was launched after Minister of Social Solidarity Ghada Waly complained that many of the school children in the country suffer serious vision problems and demanded that state intervene to help them undergo surgeries, including cataract and glaucoma surgeries, or to provide them with glasses, Sisi said.

In February, national Tahya Misr (Long Live Egypt) Fund announced allocating LE 1 billion ($56.8 million) to support the presidential initiative.

The money funded by Tahya Misr will help carry out 200,000 cataract surgeries, 15,000 glaucoma surgeries, and 3,000 corneal transplantations, Mohamed Mokhtar, the media coordinator of Tahya Misr Fund said in an interview with al-Hayah al-Youm.

The first phase of the initiative includes the ten governorates of Qalyubia, Sharkia, Dakahlia, Suez, Beni Suef, Minya, Qena, Luxor, Alexandria, and Matrouh.