By Fernando Ravsberg

From BBC World                                                                    Read Spanish Version

HAVANA -- "Of the 37 million blind people in the world, half could see again if they are operated of cataracts" with a swift and inexpensive surgical intervention.

The assessment is made by Cuban Dr. Marcelino Ríos, director of the Pando Ferrer Ophthalmological Hospital, birthplace of "Operation Miracle," a project promoted by the governments of Cuba and Venezuela that has returned eyesight to 1.5 million people.

Although everything began in this place, where as many as 500 operations are done in a single day, the initiative has extended to 61 other eye clinics donated by Cuba to 20 Latin American and African countries. The centers are staffed by Cuban surgeons.

The operations are free and aim to benefit those people who don't have enough money to pay for the price charged by eye surgeons in their countries.

The number of diseases that are treated is long. The most common is cataracts, but operations are also performed for glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, trachoma and onchocercosis.

Ten minutes is enough

Public Health authorities allowed the foreign press to enter the hospital, even into the operating rooms, where dozens of patients are treated at enormous speed. To restore the sight of a person afflicted by cataracts takes only 10 minutes.

The teams are formed by four persons: an assistant and a scrub nurse help the surgeon, who shares the surgical microscope with another surgeon, an observer. They work all day and leave the O.R. only to eat.

Dr. Luis Curbelo, one of the surgeons we met at the Pando Ferrer center, told BBC World that he normally performs eight to ten operations a day, "but there have been days when I've done 50." In most cases, successfully, he added.

"From a medical and human point of view, this seems to me to be an excellent project.

Thousands of people have regained vision thanks to it. I have operated people from more than 10 Latin American countries," Curbelo said, before returning to the O.R.

Shapes and colors

Clemente Romero had just been operated of cataracts when he talked to BBC World.

"The operation is very quick and was a success. The only bad thing is a mild pain in my eye and the fact that I had to fast this morning," the old man said.

Romero's story is repeated with every person we interview at the Pando Ferrer hospital, whether they are Cubans, Salvadorans, Jamaicans or Haitians. Like Clemente, they can't believe that they are once again perceiving shapes and colors.

The medical center will triple its capacity with a new O.R. where several patients will be operated on simultaneously, the hospital director tells us. The institution has 34 surgical microscopes.

"Everything in Operation Miracle is paid by this poor country," Ríos told BBC World. The costs are high. "One surgical microscope costs 75,000 euros and some essential units, available in Europe, cost 125,000 euros."

"Although we do not purchase anything in the United States, the economic embargo has affected us. In Germany, [the lens manufacturer] Zeiss had to change the camera in a unit because it was made by Kodak, and Kodak was not allowed to sell it to Cuba," the hospital director said.

Fernando Ravsberg is the BBC's correspondent in Cuba.