A ten-man delegation from the bolivarian republic of Venezuela, comprising of six medical practitioners and four representatives of the Foreign Affairs Department of Venezuela, arrived in the country last Saturday for a week-long fact-finding and evaluation mission in preparation for cataract and pterygium operation to be conducted in due course.

The delegation, dubbed “The Miracle Mission,” a humanitarian programme created three years ago and designed by the governments of Venezuela and Cuba in order to assist at no cost, the teeming populations suffering from visual problems in resource-scarce countries, yesterday visited the Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital in Banjul and the Sheikh Zaid Regional Eye Care Centre in Kanifing to assess some of the facilities in place so as to make preparation for the logistical needs in advance of the operations.

Speaking to this reporter shortly after touring the facilities in the two centres, Dr.Jose Luis Moctezuma, a member of the delegation, said that their delegation is an advance mission that has come to the country to prepare the logistics and hopefully conduct operations on cataract and Pterygium cases in the country.

According to Dr. Moctezuma, the mission will evaluate the conditions in place here and then report back to the Venezuelan government who will put in place the necessary logistics. He however stressed the need for some adjustment to be done with regards to some of the materials available for the operations. “Some of the equipment”, he said “if unavailable will lead to taking the patients to our regional headquarters in Mali for the operations.”

For his part, Mr. Saihou Janneh, Deputy Permanent Secretary at the Department of State for Health and Social Welfare, expressed the belief that the team would return to The Gambia soon after they are back in Venezuela to perform operations on patients in the country.

Deputy Permanent Secretary Janneh underscored the significance of the mission which, he noted, would bring about a major boost in the country’s health sector.

According to Mr. Janneh, some three hundred Gambian students would very soon benefit from a scholarship package to study in their respective field of studies in the republic of Venezuela. This, he added, demonstrates the strong bilateral relationship that exists between the two countries.

“The delegation is very impressed with the facilities they found with us here and are really willing to work with us provided that some few adjustments are done,” DPS Janneh concluded.