On July 8, 2004, a group of Venezuelan citizens made a first trip to Cuba to receive eye surgery by Cuban doctors and in that moment the Operation Miracle began to grow.
Nearly a year after that event, on August 25, 2005, Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro signed the Sandino Compromise, which established the support and attention of the peoples of the Americas to boost comprehensive development in the region. This was the brew of Operation Miracle, an initiative to offer specialized medical attention to poor citizens with visual problems.
Ricardo Riera said that humanity has not known a similar humanitarian mission such as Operation Miracle in history and he added that out of all the eye surgeries administered on patients with cataracts, glaucoma and other conditions 58 percent have been Venezuelan.
We have carried out 3 million 927 thousand and 406 eye surgeries, out of which over 2 million 200 thousand have been administered to Venezuelan citizens, said the official.
Riera said that they are setting up new medical brigades, new facilities both in Venezuela and abroad, and new eye-treatment centers in countries like Argentina, El Salvador, Peru and Bolivia.
Actually, the Operation Miracle is the hope to take the light to all the eyes of the people of the Americas, from the North to the South and even farther, in other continents, because that light has been taken to Africa, Europe and Asia.
