The Tzu Chi Medical Foundation Philippines (TCMFP) held the groundbreaking ceremony for its second eye center in the Philippines in Imus, Cavite on Sunday, raising hope for thousands of visually impaired patients to regain their sight.
“This is very eventful because when we started nobody knew us but today our patients are overflowing every day. We do not have enough space anymore in our first eye center,” TCMFP CEO Alfredo Li told DAILY TRIBUNE, referring to Tzu Chi Eye Center (TCEC) in Sta. Mesa, Manila.
According to Li, Carlos Chan, chairman of the Liwayway Group, and his family donated the land where the five-storey Tzu Chi Imus Eye Center (TCIEC) will be built, adding that the foundation and its volunteer doctors will run the facility.
The TCEC started operating in 2016 and the number of patients seeking cataract and other eye operation at the facility has increased to 200 to 400 per month to date. The figures exclude the nearly 200 outpatients served at the TCEC per month. It served 189,317 outpatients and conducted 25,148 surgeries from 2007 to 2025.
With TCIEC, the foundation can serve more patients from Cavite, Laguna and Batangas provinces, Li said.
TCIEC will provide free screenings and sponsored cataract, retina, glaucoma, squint and other specialized eye surgeries. Like the TCEC, the TCIEC will have state-of-the-art equipment.
“Our founders instructed us to use the best equipment, medicines, and doctors. Always for the benefit of the people,” Li said.
“Through the unwavering services of the Tzu Chi Foundation, to all of our communities and neighboring areas, they have meaningfully advanced public health by creating compassionate and high-quality health care services closest to those who are most needed,” Department of Health CALABARZON regional director Voltaire Guadalupe said.
“As we start this new chapter with Tzu Chi in Imus, Cavite, we know that we are also laying the foundation for the future, where more vision will be restored, more lives will be changed and more communities will gain access to eye care services,” he added.
The TCIEC will be the third medical facility of Tzu Chi in the country. Last 8 May, Tzu Chi Philippines held the groundbreaking for the Tzu Chi Medical Center (TCMC) at the Buddhist Tzu Chi Campus also in Sta. Mesa, Manila.
The TCMC will be a 12-floor, 5,000-plus-square-meter tertiary hospital with over 300 beds that will cater to poor and rich patients of any nationality and race, said Dr. Josefino “Jo” Qua, co-founder of the Tzu Chi International Medical Association.