A CONSULTANT has received a funding boost to enable him and colleagues to help save the sight of people in Madagascar.

Oliver Backhouse, from Minskip, near Boroughbridge, is a consultant opthalmologist at the Yorkshire Eye Hospital at Apperley Bridge, between Leeds and Bradford.

He founded the charity Madagascar Organisation for Saving Sight (Moss), working to establish a link with the Indian Ocean island, which has a chronic adult and child blindness problem, most of which is preventable.

The organisation has received £30,000 from the Batchworth Trust, a charity based in Surrey, to help fund an outreach cataract programme for three years.

Every three months, a mission group will stay for a week to operate, hold clinics and conduct general consultations.

Mr Backhouse founded Moss in 1993 after visiting the island and being struck by the plight of its people.

The country has a population of 17 million and has one ophthalmologist for every million.

Cataracts, which can be treated cheaply, account for 60 per cent of adult blindness, while experts say that 90 per cent of child blindness could be easily prevented.

Mr Backhouse's charity aims to tackle the underlying causes of blindness by educating people about eye care and through outreach treatment centres.

He said: "Our work is clearly having a great effect on the population.

"A recent 24-part radio series which we produced as a soap opera was an effective way to reach 70 per cent of the rural population via wind-up radio and many are now asking how and what they could do to have cataract surgery.

"Outreach is an effort to bridge the gap with the rural population, which has no opthalmic service within reasonable distance.

"Transport costs to get them to the nearest city are too high.''