Good eyesight advocates honor national hero Jose Rizal on Sight Saving Month

In line with Sight Saving Month, healthy eyesight advocates on Sunday paid tribute to Dr. Jose Rizal the ophthalmologist.

Led by the Department of Health (DOH), the groups held a wreath-laying ceremony at the Rizal Monument in Manila.

Under Proclamation No. 40, the late president Ramon Magsaysay declared every first week of August as Sight-Conservation Week to hold a nationwide educational campaign to prevent blindness among Filipinos.

Upon learning that his mother was going blind, Rizal decided to switch to medicine at the University of Santo Tomas, specializing later in ophthalmology. He received his four-year practical training in medicine at Ospital de San Juan de Dios in Intramuros.

Rizal later worked as an assistant to a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. The future national hero would fulfill his dream of caring for his mother's sight when he performed successful cataract surgery on his mother's left eye.

Present at the event were DOH Health Promotion Bureau, Policy and Technology Division Chief Rodley Carza, The Fred Hollows Foundation Country Manager Dr. Maria Victoria Rondaris, and National Committee for Sight Preservation Chairperson Dr. Noel Chua.

According to DOH, over two million Filipinos are living with visual impairment, and 62% of them have cataracts.

Most Filipinos with visual impairment live below the national poverty line and are concentrated in rural areas where eye care services are difficult to access, according to The Fred Hollows Foundation. —Mariel Celine Serquiña/RF, GMA Integrated News