When the gauze on an eye of Zou Fengrong was removed by a nurse, she was excited to find herself able to see the world so clear.

The 62-year-old woman on a wheelchair from north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region suffered cataract for more than three years and her eyesight was very poor. Her family had no money for an eye operation and her disease in legs made her life more difficult.

Zou's woes were partly alleviated when Ophthalmologist Dennis Lam Shun Chiu from Hong Kong performed a cataract operation on her last Friday.

The operation on Zou also marked the launching of "Project Vision", a Hong Kong charity program that aims to create 100 centers on the Chinese mainland to perform cataract operations for the poor.

"By donating equipment and training local doctors, the project will help poor regions form a steady medical team," Qi Qingdong, an official with the Ministry of Health said on Saturday's inauguration ceremony in Xilinhot, the location of the project's first treatment center.

Elsie Leung Oi-sie, a consultant for the Project Vision Charity Fund, said the project would target poor people with eye illnesses that could not afford an operation and it aimed to perform at least 100,000 cataract operations in poor area each year.

Statistics from the Fund show there are 9 million blind people on the mainland, half of whom are cataract sufferers.

According to Ophthalmologist Lam, the president of the Fund, "Project Vision" was going to raise 100 million yuan (US$13.1 million) in five years to fund the 100 centers across the country and extend operation scope to glaucoma and other major eye diseases.

Under the project, a rural cataract patient would pay only about 1,000 yuan (US$131) for the operation, less than one third of the original cost, said Wei Rongtao, director of the ophthalmic section of the Xilinhot People's Hospital.

"If the patient has joined the rural medical cooperative system, he will only pay 650 yuan (US$85.5) as the rest cost will be covered by the medicare program," said Wei, adding patients with financial difficulties could have free operations which would be entirely sponsored by the Fund.

Han Qide, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the top legislature, is the honorary director of "Project Vision", and former Health Minister Gao Qiang is a honorary consultant.

(Xinhua News Agency September 24, 2007)