Before
Kankan has long been the second city in Guinea. On the opposite side of Conakry and connected to the capital by a long and difficult road access, the need to open a unit in this region of Upper Guinea quickly became apparent to Voir La Vie. The OPC (Office for the Prevention of Blindness) then had an ophthalmological service within the city's regional hospital. Before equipping the center, we recruited the head of department, Dr Mamadou SOW, whom we trained in our unit in Conakry. Then, thanks to funds from Rotary, we purchased a new binocular surgical microscope, the only (very expensive) equipment that was missing from the collection carried out in France and shipped by container.
It was in 1998 that we opened the unit and carried out, like its sister structure at Flamboyants de Conakry, the first cataract operations using extra-capsular implants.
NOW
Two years after the opening of our unit, the West African Health Organization implemented, with the help of the WHO (World Health Organization), National Plans to Combat Blindness (PNLC) in 16 West African countries. Structures for coordinating national eye care, these headquarters also had the mission of better supervising the development of public health offers carried out mainly by local actors, namely NGOs.
It was our Kankan unit that was chosen as the reference structure at the start of the PNLC program. The OPC raised the funds necessary for its reconversion and Voir La Vie sold its second unit to open that of Kindia.
