The Chinese Foundation for Lifeline Express has sent two hospital trains to six provincial-level regions this year and is expected to offer free cataract operations for 6,000 patients, the project announced recently.

Lifeline Express is a project that converts trains into mobile hospitals to carry out cataract surgeries. It was launched in 1997 as a gift from the people of Hong Kong to commemorate the city's return to the motherland.

The two trains have called at cities in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, the provinces of Jilin, Shandong, Henan, Gansu and Jiangxi. Medical squads have also been sent to far-flung areas that cannot be reached through railway to offer free, on-site services.

As of recently, more than 4,200 patients have benefited from the project this year, the foundation said during an event held in Beijing on Nov 21 to celebrate its 27th anniversary.

The foundation also initiated an international program in countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative in 2016.

This year, foreign medical aid teams have been dispatched to Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan and completed nearly 1,000 cataract operations.

Through a blindness-prevention facility it established in Kyrgyzstan this year, more than 4,300 cataract patients have received surgeries and local ophthalmologists have received training.