A Massachusetts based Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) IGo Corp has partnered with Ancilla Catholic Hospital Eye Center, Agege, Lagos State to fund the eye surgery of 20 children.
Speaking during the eye surgery in Lagos recently, Taiwo Tojun, a representative of IGo Corp, said the purpose of the organisation is continue supporting the vision and education of children.
Tojun stated that the mission of the NGO is not specific to cataract, but anything version wise that prevents a child from functioning well.
He explained that the surgeries are cataract surgeries, adding that the choice of cataract was primarily because the hospital identified that there were children on it pediatric surgery list, “and we taught that was a good start.”
Tojun remarked that this was the first mission IGo corp is partnering with a clinic where it funding surgeries for children, “But since 2016, we have been coming home yearly and we have been giving free eye examination to identify children with refractive error problems, so we focus on visual impairment due to refractive errors.”
According to him, “Visual impairment is a refractive error, but cataract is also a cause of visual impairment and in fact it is a more serious condition. So this is the first time we are partnering with a clinic to support a more serious medical condition for children.
“We believe in starting small and make an impact; we don’t have to go to other States. There could be other organisations that can step up in other States. We hope to grow this initiative into something that is beyond ancillary. This is just one partner; we hope to have other partners who can connect us to the target population we want to serve.
“There is always value in non-government and government partnership. We hope that at the right time and as we continue to grow, government will appreciate what we are providing and we can partner to scale it up because it is easier with government funds than trying to raise funds to do it. For today, we are going to have a total of eight surgeries and a total of five children which means two children have bilateral cataracts and their eyes need to be operated upon.”
