ALBANIA & BULGARIA:  IEF receives one of the first USAID grants for Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism to establish public health eye care programs in Bulgaria and Albania.

BULGARIA:  IEF’s Country Representative, Prof. Petja Vassileva, MD, MPH conducts the first community-based, random sample, blindness prevalence survey in collaboration with Prof. Sheila West and Dr. Richard Geiser of the Dana Center for Preventive Ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins University 1991-1992.  Results are presented at ARVO, published in scientific journals, and the data are extrapolated to the rest of Eastern and Central Europe by the WHO Programme for Prevention of Blindness. IEF facilitated the establishment of the first “international standard” Sofia Eye Bank in the capital Sofia.

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