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Dr. Ana Lucía Asturias is being honored with the Else Kröner Fresenius Award for Development Cooperation in Medicine 2024.
In her capacity as Senior Physician for Pediatric Ophthalmology from the organization Unidad Nacional de Oftalmología, Dr. Ana Lucía Asturias is receiving the Else Kröner Fresenius Award for Development Cooperation 2024 in distinguished acknowledgment of her project “Retinopathy of Prematurity in Guatemala”. The award-winner developed a programmee to keep premature infants from going blind. The award from the foundation Else Kröner-Fresenius-Stiftung (EKFS) is endowed with 100,000 euros and numbers among the most renowned distinctions in the field of development cooperation in medicine. The formal award presentation ceremony will be held on October 15th at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Berlin.
To prevent so-called baby blindness, Dr. Ana Lucía Asturias and the Unidad Nacional de Oftalmología organization have developed and established a programme in Guatemala. The programme has been implemented with the support of the Christian Blind Mission (CBM) since 2019. The Unidad Nacional de Oftalmología is a nationally active, partly state-run entity that provides highest-quality eye care at affordable prices along with training for professional staff. Key mainstays within the program are both the screening and treatment of preterm infants, as well as the active use of telemedicine.
“With this year’s award we are acknowledging an outstanding project in the area of child health. Through straightforward and very effective measures such as extensive screenings, a project that can distinctly improve children’s health,” is how Dr. Jochen Bitzer, responsible for humanitarian funding at EKFS, explains the award allocation.
The project was nominated by CBM, a supporter of the program for years. “We are very pleased about this award,” adds Dr. Rainer Brockhaus, co-CEO of CBM. “With the work they do, Dr. Ana Lucía Asturias and her team contribute substantially toward reducing preventable visual impairments and blindness in children in Guatemala.”
Photo credit: ©EKFS/Simone Utler
