Her Majesty the Royal Grandmother, Ashi Kesang Choeden Wangchuck graced the ground breaking ceremony for the construction of the national eye centre in Thimphu, yesterday.
The eye centre will be constructed above the community health department of the national referral hospital and expects to be operational by the end of 2018. The eye centre is named after Her Majesty the Royal Grandmother and will be called as “The Gyalyum Kesang Choeden Wangchuck National Eye Centre”.
It will be a state of the art eye care centre in the country. Once complete, it will help in providing specialized services to various cases of eye disease which is increasing in the present day scenario.
“I think referral cases from districts are increasing. With the opening of the new eye hospital we are expecting this will help in providing a quality care to our patient suffering from eye diseases. The centre will help us in providing training for our health professionals in the area of eye care,” said the Director General of the Department of Public Health, Dr. Pandup Tshering.
Health Minister Tandin Wangchuk also pointed out that the eye care service in Bhutan is well integrated at all levels of health facility.
“Despite having trained professionals in districts and BHUs, the Rapid Assessment for Avoidable Blindness survey conducted in 2009 estimated that 0.33 % of our population had some form of blindness. So once the centre is complete, it will have all kinds of facilities to deliver advanced eye care services”.
The Gyalyum Kesang Choden Wangchuk National eye centre will also house 16-beds in four aseptic wards and three operation theaters among others.
The Himalayan Cataract Project led by Dr. Sanduk Ruit and Wen Giving Foundation is technically and financially supporting the establishment of the centre, worth Nu 102 M.
“We have been involved with the prevention of blindness program of Bhutan since mid 1990s in regard of human resources training and in building primary eye care through Himalayan Cataract Project. We have been engaged in training lot of doctors in Nepal and then carrying on all the eye camps in other parts of the world. So this was going on for last 20 years,” added Dr. Sanduk Ruit, Co-founder of Himalayan Cataract Project.
