{"id":435634,"date":"2026-09-08T17:21:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T11:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/radionepalonline.com\/en\/?p=435634"},"modified":"2026-09-08T17:21:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T11:36:12","slug":"nnjs-bags-who-south-east-asia-2026-regional-award-for-public-health-champions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radionepalonline.com\/en\/2026\/09\/08\/435634.html","title":{"rendered":"NNJS bags WHO South-East Asia 2026 Regional Award for Public Health Champions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Kathmandu:<\/strong> The Nepal Netra Jyoti Sangh (NNJS) has been awarded the ‘WHO South-East Asia Regional Public Health Champion Award 2026’ by the World Health Organization (WHO), South-East Asia Regional Office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo Courtesy: RSS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The prestigious award was given to the NNJS today at the 79th meeting of the WHO South-East Asia Regional Committee held in Dili, Timor-Leste. WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus presented the award to the NNJS President Prof. Dr. Chetraj Pant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

NNJS has been awarded for restoring sight to millions through equitable, people-centred eye-care services that have significantly reduced avoidable blindness in Nepal, the WHO said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NNJS is Nepal’s largest philanthropic eye-care provider and has worked for nearly five decades to eliminate avoidable blindness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through an extensive nationwide network of eye hospitals and vision centres, innovative outreach programmes and the integration of eye care into primary health care, NNJS has restored sight to millions and helped reduce Nepal’s blindness prevalence from 0.84% in 1981 to 0.28% in 2020\/2021. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since its establishment, the organization has delivered more than 46.8 million outpatient consultations and 5.39 million eye surgeries, providing a sustainable, people-centred model for equitable eye care and valuable lessons for countries across the South-East Asia Region. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the NNJS’s General Secretary Bharat Bahadur Chand, the organization has so far provided eye treatment services to 5 million 24 thousand and 489 people and has also performed eye surgeries on 5 million 659 thousand and 624 people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

NNJS currently provides eye care services to Nepali and various other foreign citizens through 28 eye hospitals and 226 eye treatment centers across 44 district branches. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now in its second year, the WHO South-East Asia Regional Award for Public Health Champions recognizes individuals and institutions whose sustained leadership and contributions have led to significant and lasting improvements in public health across the Region. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The award honours achievements that have transformed health systems, advanced equity, strengthened resilience, and delivered measurable health gains through innovation, community engagement and health systems strengthening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year, 102 nominations were received from across the South-East Asia Region. Along with NNJS, the WHO South-East Asia Regional Office has also awarded Dr Nittaya Phanuphak of Thailand and Dr K. Suresh Kumar of India. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The award recognizes Dr Nittaya for pioneering innovative and equitable HIV prevention and service delivery models that have influenced policy and practice across the Asia-Pacific region; Dr Kumar for pioneering a community-owned model that has transformed community-based palliative care across multiple countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The recipients were selected through a competitive process by a screening committee comprising senior WHO officials. Nominations were assessed based on public health impact, innovation, scalability, sustainability and equity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

RSS<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The prestigious award was given to the NNJS today at the 79th meeting of the WHO South-East Asia Regional Committee held in Dili, Timor-Leste. WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus presented the award to the NNJS President Prof. Dr. Chetraj Pant. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":435635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,3,4,2],"tags":[],"reporter":[],"class_list":["post-435634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-en-cover","category-english","category-en-news","category-top-stories-main"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radionepalonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435634"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radionepalonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radionepalonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radionepalonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radionepalonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radionepalonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":435636,"href":"https:\/\/radionepalonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435634\/revisions\/435636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radionepalonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radionepalonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radionepalonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radionepalonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435634"},{"taxonomy":"reporter","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radionepalonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/reporter?post=435634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}