Date: 29 de November de 2025. Category: News.

In addition to the daily work carried out by trained fellows and by our optical and optometry centres, we plan the following new activities for the year 2026.

SUPPORT FOR THE EUREKA MEDICAL CENTRE IN BURKINA FASO

Burkina Faso is the seventh poorest country in the world. We will continue supporting the Ophthalmology Centre that we established within the Eureka Medical Centre in Bobo-Dioulasso, where we already have consulting rooms, an operating theatre, an optical shop and a workshop. We have already granted scholarships to two ophthalmologists, an optician, a laboratory technician and an engineer specialised in biomedical equipment repair. With Development Aid funding from the Government of La Rioja, we will equip a new laboratory, which will benefit not only patients with eye conditions but anyone attending the centre.

BLINDNESS PROGRAMME — NORTH OF CAMEROON

We will continue our strategy to improve eye care assistance in this northern region of Cameroon, one of the poorest in the world, which currently has only one ophthalmologist for a population of 4 million people.

  • We will continue funding the second year of residency at the Kilimanjaro Medical College in Tanzania for the Cameroonian doctor Richard Zebaze. Dr Zebaze will later work at the Maroua hospital, in northern Cameroon, one of the poorest areas in the world, where our former fellow, Dr Nelly Foppoussi, is currently the only ophthalmologist for 4 million people.
  • At the Maroua hospital, and in collaboration with Dr Foppoussi, we will launch a programme to prevent blindness caused by glaucoma and to treat childhood eye cancer. We will provide SLT equipment to treat glaucoma—one of the main causes of blindness in Africa—and diagnostic equipment to treat retinoblastoma, a childhood eye cancer highly prevalent in the region. To make this treatment possible, we funded Dr Foppoussi’s training in 2025 at the Sheba Medical Centre in Tel Aviv, one of the most prestigious centres in the world in this field.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Nelly Foppoussy.

CONSTRUCTION OF AN OPTICAL CENTRE IN BENIN FOR 300,000 PEOPLE

Benin ranks 163rd in human development out of 189 countries. In collaboration with the English NGO Vision Action, we will build an optical centre in Parakou, Benin, between 2026 and 2028, in partnership with the local NGO Foundation Vie Pour Tous, founded by the Beninese priest P. Théodore Soume.

We will fund the training of two local optician-optometrists for two years in Gambia and construct an optical shop + workshop to be operated 100% by local personnel. This will allow 300,000 people to obtain glasses, something currently impossible due to the lack of such services in this extremely poor region.

SPAIN

10th International Congress for the Prevention of Blindness. Logroño, La Rioja, Spain. Autumn 2026.