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)