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Thursday, May 08, 2008

Cuba-Venezuela eye surgery program extended to prisoners in Pinar del Rio

Cuba-Venezuela eye surgery program extended to prisoners in Pinar del Rio
Ray Sanchez | Direct from Havana
7:33 AM EDT, May 7, 2008
Havana

One hundred inmates in Pinar del Rio have had eye surgery under the
Miracle Mission program operated jointly with Venezuela.

The Communist Party newspaper Granma reported that the western province
was "the first in the country to provide preventative care to its
convict population for problems that could have caused irrevocable loss
of sight."

About 21,000 people in Pinar del Rio have had free eye operations since
April 2006 under Miracle Mission, an international aid program that has
provided eye surgery to more than a million needy patients, the
newspaper reported. Eye specialists examined nearly 31,000 people in
Pinar del Rio.

"We had already completed the study of the region's inhabitants," Osmany
Correa, program coordinator in Pinar del Rio, told the newspaper. "There
only remained a small percentage that had not been checked because they
were prisoners, and we decided to include them."

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sfl-0507havanadaily,0,3177044.column

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