Topic: Eye Care
World Sight Day is tomorrow, but each day eye care providers around the world are helping individuals. Here are a few examples:
- The GattonStar reports that "optometrist Anita Salter of Eyecare Plus Gatton, is taking the World Sight Day Challenge....On World Sight Day, ... Anita will donate her eye exam fees to help provide eye exams and glasses to children who can't see to learn at school and adults who can't see to provide for their families.
- "It takes a lot of work for Monique Pilkington to sort out the logistics of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) Medical Mobile Eye Care Clinic’s yearly tour of northern Ontario," notes NorthernLife.ca. Pilkington must ... "ensure two nurses are trained to drive the transport truck containing a mini-ophthalmologist’s office, recruit ophthalmologists to work in the eye van and co-ordinate with local Lions Club members, who act as hosts in the various communities the program visits. ...The eye van serves about 5,000 people each year in 30 communities, providing vision screening, treatment of eye conditions and minor surgery."
- Optometry Giving Sight, the organizer of the World Sight Day Challenge, funds programs that train local eye care professionals and develop vision centers which provide permanent vision care to people in desperate need. That need increases annually.
- "The world is suffering a global eye care crisis according to world leaders in vision health and development who attended the World Congress on Refractive Error in Durban, South Africa." The KansisCityStar posted the following: "A staggering 670 million are avoidably blind or vision impaired because they don't have simple vision correction (spectacles) that could be provided at a relatively low cost, reports leading advocate, Professor Brien Holden, CEO of the International Centre for Eyecare Education (ICEE). 'The cost of not providing eye care services to those in need is well in excess of approximately $US269 billion per annum, just in lost productivity. The sad part is, the numbers affected by uncorrected vision problems will only rise if we don't recognise it and take action,' he told the congress."
