Ophtalmology Clinic La Vision

There is very few medical services in the South of Madagascar. Generally there are only doctors in larger cities and public transport often takes too long and is too expensive. So often a visit to the doctor means a 30km walk by foot.

In Fort Dauphin there is no eye clinic within an area of 300km. This makes it very hard for people to have their eyes treated, despite having an operation when needed. Many people can be helped by a simple treatment or medication, helping them to improve their eye sight and thus improve their life quality.

This is how we help:

Our aim at La Vision is to build up an eye clinic in Fort Dauhpin. The buildings are already there and have been renovated. The clinic includes: an office, two treatment rooms, two rooms for storage of medication, an operation room, a preparation room and a recovering room. All these rooms are within three connecting buildings.

We shipped a first container in spring 2013 filled with operation material, furniture and medicine which were donated by our friends and family. In addition,  through the help of many others we managed to send hundreds of eye glasses to Fort Dauphin. After the arrival of the container, the last renovation works were done and the clinic opened in 2013.

We have hired a malgache oftalmologist, Dr. Parfait at our clinic “La Vision”. His monthly salary is financed by donations.

Sarah, who has now also got a permanent job at “La Vision” takes care of the clinic (cleaning of the three buildings), as well as taking care of the patients before and after operations.

Dr. Tomas, an oftalmologist from Valencia, helps us voluntarily. He is willing to fly to Madagascar 2-3 weeks a year to operate/treat people for free. In 2012 he accompanied us to Fort Dauphin to check out the situation on site. During his visit he treated over 70 patients, in addition to the children from the local public school and the orphanage.

Stated by the malgache law, we also have to hire a general doctor and a nurse. All this personal has to be paid. We pay these salaries through donations. So to keep  this project up and running in the future we depend on all the support we can get.