Generous donation can help restore the eyesight of a child who cannot afford to pay for a simple surgery which costs as little as Tk 5000, said Joanna Lumley, a British actress.

Addressing a press conference in the city yesterday she said, "Every minute one adult while every five minutes one child go blind globally. Seventy percent of this blindness are unnecessary and preventable."

The urgency is to identify those blind children before they reach seven years of their sightless life and treat them accordingly, she added.

Joanna is now in Bangladesh to support the campaigns of Sight Savers International, the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind.

In her first ever visit to Sight Savers' campaign in a developing country Joanna said, "My role is to

raise money for the unfortunate people who cannot afford to pay for the surgeries and other costs associated with it. on my return I will hold similar campaigns hopefully to persuade British citizens to donate for such causes."

During her stay since three days ago, she visited several places outside the capital to see the activities of the Sight Savers.

"There are approximately 40,000 blind children in Bangladesh of which one third are due to cataract which is surgically treatable. A further one third of the blind could have been prevented through simple public health interventions like vitamin A supplementation, immunisation, good practices in nutrition and breast feeding," said M Enamul Kabir, country representative of Sight Savers International in Bangladesh, at the press conference.

Quoting surveys he said in Bangladesh about 1.53 percent of the population above 30 years of age or 7.5 lakh people suffer from blindness, 80 percent of which are for needless reasons.

"Since last July, we have launched a four and a half years crash programme in collaboration with orbis International to identify and treat 10,000 children suffering from cataract. With this goal we have already trained 14,000 people in the districts to give primary eye care and identify people suffering from low vision," Kabir said.

The new childhood cataract campaign also aims at covering substantial numbers of 20 lakh children who suffer from refractive blindness and require magnifier to correct the illness. It is estimated to cost two million British pounds to do surgeries for the targeted 10,000 blind children.

Zahidul Hassan, resource mobilisation manager, and Dr Alamgir Hossain of Sight Savers also spoke at the conference held at the Brac Inn in the afternoon.