Hellen Keller award honors Indonesia
Hellen Keller award honors Indonesia
JAKARTA (JP): Helen Keller International Incorporated (HKI), a
New York-based agency providing aid for blindness prevention and
the rehabilitation of the blind, will present the Helen Keller
International Award to Indonesia, making it the first country
ever to receive the award.
The award, presented in the form of "The Spirit of Helen
Keller" statuette, will be presented to President Soeharto on
behalf of the people of Indonesia during the commemoration of
National Children's Day.
Country Director of HKI to Indonesia Steve Wilbur told a press
conference yesterday that the honor is being awarded for what the
agency considers Indonesia's achievements towards eliminating
blindness due to vitamin A deficiencies.
"The presentation of the award will provide Indonesia with an
opportunity to show the world what it can and has achieved."
Wilbur said the award has been given sporadically over the
last 34 years. Only 15 outstanding individuals in HKI's field of
interest have received it.
The HKI was conceived 75 years ago, near the end of World War
I, as one of the leading agencies concerned with blindness
prevention and the rehabilitation of the blind.
It was originally organized by several individuals, including
Helen Keller, to help rehabilitate World War I veterans who were
blinded during their military service.
The agency, which operates in over 80 countries worldwide,
started its work in Indonesia in the 1950's when Helen Keller, a
renown American woman who was born blind and who later devoted
her life to assisting the blind, visited Indonesia as a
consultant to AFOB.
National strategy
During the visit, she met with then president Sukarno and
started a relationship with the Indonesian government.
It wasn't until the early 1970's that the move to assist the
government in its effort to control vitamin A deficiency began.
In 1976 a vitamin A deficiency project was established in
Bandung to review the epidemiology of vitamin A deficiencies and
the clinical characteristics of the disease and to carry out a
national study to develop a national strategy for the control of
vitamin A deficiency.
"We try to get into the system and work with the
government...and assist them when they go into remote places in
the country and carry out cataract operations or medical eye
checkups," Wilbur said.
Director General of Community Health Supervision S.I. Leimena
said a 1977 survey carried out by the Ministry of Health and HKI
found about 60,000 children in Indonesia suffer from serious
cases of vitamin A deficiency every year. One-third of them
become totally blind.
The government launched a campaign to reduce this to below
WHO's standard of 0.5 percent and succeeded. By 1992, 24 out of
Indonesia's 27 provinces had an average vitamin A deficiency
level of 0.3 percent.
Indonesia is now the only developing country which has
overcome the problem of vitamin A deficiency and blindness.
In comparison, Leimena added, Nepal has a figure of 1.3 to 8.2
percent, India 4 to 7.2 percent and Sudan 2.7 percent.
Both Wilbur and Leimena remarked that children in particular
will always be vulnerable to vitamin A deficiencies.
"Therefore, preventive actions must be maintained because no
one is immune to it ... and a deficiency can easily lead to
blindness," Leimena said.
UNICEF representative Bijan Sharif said over the past ten
years, his agency has distributed 45 million vitamin A capsules
worth US$1 million for the 23 children of Indonesia.
The experts agreed, however, that vitamin A coming from
natural sources, such as papaya, mangoes and carrots, is much
better than that from capsules. (pwn)