The handover ceremony of the medical equipment supported by the Government of Japan to Himalaya Eye Hospital (HEH) in Pokhara Metropolitan City, Kaski District, was held today. KIKUTA Yutaka, Ambassador of Japan to Nepal, attended the ceremony.

Under the Grant Assistance for Grassroots Human Security Projects (GGP) of the Government of Japan, the project to install medical equipment for surgical eye camps organized by HEH was supported with USD 60,289 (approximately NPR 7.6 million). HEH conducts eye camps for free in Gandaki and Karnali provinces, primarily for cataract surgeries. This project provided to improve the diagnosis and surgeries more effective and safer at eye camps.

On this occasion, Ambassador Kikuta congratulated and expressed his appreciation for the efforts of all those involved in the project. He emphasized that the project has been a great help to the patients who left behind medical access to treatment for cataracts, one of the major causes of blindness in Nepal. He also expressed his hope that the project would significantly improve HEH’s performance and contribute to the well-being of patients, their families, and communities.

HEH is one of the core eye hospitals in Western Nepal and was established in 1993 in Pokhara. It consults more than 160,000 patients and conducts 7,000 surgeries annually. In addition, the hospital conducted 37 surgical eye camps that consulted 13,511 people and performed 1,663 cataract surgeries in 2022. This year, the function of eye camps have been enhanced with the equipment provided by the GGP. The Embassy of Japan hopes that this project will contribute to the improvement of eye medical services in the western regions of the country and further deepen the friendship between the people of Japan and Nepal.

GGP was established to implement projects that directly benefit people at the grassroots level for the socio-economic development of communities. Since 1991, over 200 GGP projects have been implemented in Nepal.