Operation Miracle Benefits One Million People
Campaign News | Sunday, 6 January 2008
Santiago de Cuba, Dec 23 (Prensa Latina) Three years after Vision Now program (Operation Miracle) began, one million persons have benefited from free eye surgery, said Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage on Sunday.
Those free eye surgeries allowed people from 28 countries of the so called Third World to recover their vision or heal from different ophthalmological problems.
Lage made the announcement after the signing 14 new Cuba-Venezuela integration agreements, which were attended by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban First Vice President Raul Castro.
Since July 10, 2004, in which the first eye surgeries were made, Cuba boosted this project to preserve and recover vision of at least six million low income Latin American and Caribbean people.
Cuban doctors and technicians, with the support of the leading edge ophthalmologic technology, create conditions to annually operate about one million patients, in the framework of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA).
Meanwhile, Hugo Chavez became the first foreign citizen to receive the replica of the machete of Cuban independence war hero Antonio Maceo, and the shield of Santiago de Cuba Hero City.
Both distinctions were awarded to Chavez in a solemn ceremony held at Melia-Santiago Hotel s Libertad Hall.
Raul Castro, Carlos Lage, and Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, as well as other other government officials from both countries, attended the ceremony.
