Actress supports blindness project

(16-11-2009)

See need: Australian actress Jessica McNamee serves as an ambassador for the Fred Hollows Foundation Programme in Viet Nam. — File Photo

HCM CITY — Australian actress Jessica McNamee will visit Viet Nam this week for a first-hand look at the Fred Hollows Foundation’s blindness prevention programme in developing countries.

After her three-day visit, which begins today, McNamee will become an ambassador for the Foundation’s work in the country.

During her visit, McNamee, best known for her role as Sammy Rafter in the television series Packed to the Rafters, will bring a 86-year-old lady who has been blind for two years to the Dai Loc Clinic at the Quang Nam General Hospital for free cataract surgeries.

Jessica has contributed to foundation previously by joining charity concerts like the entertainment reality show Dancing with the Stars.

The Fred Hollows Foundation is a non-profit, community-based, non-government development aid organisation launched in Sydney in 1992 with the aim of ending avoidable blindness in 19 countries around the world.

In Viet Nam for more than 16 years, the foundation has helped train and equip nearly 400 doctors from across the country to perform modern sight-restoring cataract surgery, expanded its programme nationwide, and increased the number of annual cataract operations to 12,000.

The blindness prevention programmer in Viet Nam will receive a further boost with the commencement of the Australian Blindness Initiative - an A$45 million (US$42 million) commitment to fight avoidable blindness in the Asia-Pacific region in 2010. — VNS