Tanjung, S Kalimantan (ANTARA) - The high prevalence of cataracts in Indonesia has pushed PT Adaro Indonesia together with the Adaro Bangun Negeri Foundation (YABN) to implement a free Cataract Blind Prevention Program for a number of people.
Since 2003 this program has reached communities in six districts in South and Central Kalimantan. Among them are Tabalong, Balangan, North Hulu Sungai, Barito Kuala, East Barito, and South Barito.
6,152 eyes have been successfully operated through PT Adaro Indonesia's Corporate Social Resposibility (CSR) program with its partners.
The PKP2B permit holder is committed to continually contributing to improving public health services in its operational areas. One of them is free cataract surgery which is carried out every year.
The program was even expanded by providing free eyeglasses assistance to the public following the many cases of refractive disorders (minus eyes, plus eyes and cylinders).
From 2003 to this year 455 sunglasses were distributed to people in need.
No wonder the successful implementation of this cataract surgery program has been recognized by national and international independent institutions.
In 2011 PT Adaro Indonesia received the Platinum Award at the Indonesia CSR Award and was the best community at the Asia Responsible Empowerment Award (AREA) in 2012.
The program also won the 2014 MURI record for the category of the most cataract operations performed in a car.
The cataract surgery program run by Adaro is expected to be able to help alleviate the economic burden of the community by recovering community productivity to being more independent.
Including to supporting the WHO target to reduce the problem of visual impairment and blindness in 2020. WHO sparked Vision 2020: The Right to Sight as a hope for the realization of the world's population to avoid the problem of vision problems and blindness in 2020.
But when you look at the data, there are at least 45 million people worldwide who are suffering from blindness. It is estimated that every minute there are 12 people in the world experience blindness and 4 of them are from Southeast Asia, including Indonesia.
