A high-level meeting between Grameen Health Care Services Ltd (GHS) and The Fred Hollows Foundation was held on Wednesday at the Yunus Centre, reaffirming the two organisations’ commitment to expanding access to eye care for underprivileged communities in Bangladesh, a press release said.

The meeting also explored plans to establish a Centre of Excellence for eye health, aimed at strengthening clinical capacity and expanding the reach of eye care services across the country.

The meeting was chaired by Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus. Grameen Group Chairman Md. Ashraful Hassan and GHS Managing Director Shamsul Haque Ahmed represented GHS. The Fred Hollows Foundation was represented by Ross Piper, Chief Executive Officer (Global); Musabbir Alam, Cluster Director, South Asia and the Middle East; Zeehan Abedin, Head of Programs, Bangladesh; and A K M Badrul Huq, Senior Program Manager.

During the meeting, Professor Yunus and the visiting delegation discussed a new initiative to establish a Centre of Excellence for eye health, alongside related training programmes to strengthen clinical capacity. Discussions also covered deeper penetration of community-level eye care, the establishment of Primary Eye Care Centres, and strategies to extend services further into remote and underserved areas. 

Professor Yunus and the delegation also discussed the need for state-of-the-art instruments and equipment for eye hospitals.

The partnership’s current programme, active in Bogura, Barishal, and Satkhira, aims to deliver more than 48,000 cataract surgeries to restore vision, an additional 1,000 surgeries to facilitate cataract care, and 23,650 pairs of spectacles for refractive error correction, with a particular focus on women and schoolchildren.

The two organisations share a commitment to eliminating avoidable blindness and visual impairment among underprivileged people, promoting health-seeking behaviour within the communities they serve, extending essential eye care services to underserved and remote populations, and helping communities develop stronger habits of seeking timely eye care.

During the meeting, Grameen Group Chairman Md. Ashraful Hassan provided the visiting delegation with an overview of Grameen Group and its network of social business initiatives. The delegation also visited Grameen HealthTech to observe its operations and ongoing programmes first-hand.