Lions International will work with Seychelles to establish a vision hospital among many other areas of cooperation, the district governor, Dr Moez Manji, said on Monday.

Manji made the announcement after he paid a courtesy call to Vice President Ahmed Afif at State House.

"With the expertise that we have, we will be able to mobilise grants in support of this hospital," he said.

Manji said that this will be a long process of a year or two, "depending on how fast we can set up the MoU (memorandum of understanding)."

The other area the club wants to work closely with the government on is paediatric or childhood cancer. He explained that with the hospital, they will be able to detect cancer in children early.

Lions' Clubs International is a global service organisation that works to improve health and well-being, strengthen communities, and support those in need.

Seychelles together with Kenya and Ethiopia falls under the 411 district - whose main areas of service to the community are vision, hunger, and the environment, among others.

Another area that the club is interested in working on is that of youth development and empowerment and Manji said, "A lot of them can slip into drug abuse, due to depression and many other challenges."

He added: "With the lifestyle of the world as it is now, is very challenging, and if we do not handle it correctly we find that we are losing a lot of the youth in the wrong manner."

As Lions International has many programmes dealing with the prevention of drug abuse, Manji explained that the Lion's Club of Seychelles is planning to donate SCR 25,000 ($1,700) as a start-up to this problem.

Meanwhile, for his first visit to Seychelles, Manji and his delegation had the chance to take part in the World Diabetes Walk, which Lions Clubs held recently, which he said was to create awareness about diabetes - which is one of their global causes - and the environment.

Lions Clubs started working in Seychelles, an archipelago in the western Indian Ocean, nine years ago.

While expressing satisfaction at his visit and the activities held, Manji revealed that he has left certain goals the local clubs will need to achieve after he leaves.