Optometry Giving Sight Launches in Singapore
Optometry Giving Sight launched in Singapore on 5th September 2009. Respected optometrist, Stan Isaacs, is spearheading Optometry Giving Sight in Singapore. “Optometry Giving Sight offers an unprecedented opportunity for members of the optometric community, including eye care professionals, their staffs, patients and the industry, to make a coordinated and significant impact in the prevention of blindness,” commented Isaacs. “Eye care professionals and their patients understand the importance of good vision better than anyone. Through their financial support of Optometry Giving Sight we have the opportunity to transform lives through the gift of vision.”
Optometry Giving Sight in Singapore will work with the eye care profession, industry and people who wear glasses and contact lenses to raise funds to provide sustainable vision care programs in the developing world.
More than a third of the 670 million people who are blind or vision impaired simply because they do not have access to an eye examination and glasses live in Southeast Asia. Many of these men and women are unable to see to care for and provide for their families and the children are unable to see to study at school. Optometry Giving Sight will direct funds to programs that not only deliver primary vision care but that also train local eye care professionals and develop infrastructure such as vision centres and schools of optometry.
According to the World Health Organization, uncorrected refractive error (the need for glasses) is a leading cause of avoidable blindness and yet it ranks among one of the most cost effective interventions in health care. It can cost just US $5 to provide an eye examination, a pair of glasses and residual training to local staff in countries where eye care services are few. This alone could be enough to save someone from the injustices of poverty.
Global Founding Corporate Patron of Optometry Giving Sight, CIBA VISION, has joined other industry leaders, Abbott Medical Optics, CooperVision and Carl Zeiss in demonstrating their support by becoming Pioneer Sponsors in the region (Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong).
Optometry Giving Sight has been raising funds in the U.K. and Australia since 2003 and today has offices in the U.S., Canada, Ireland, Norway, Italy and the Netherlands.
By the end of 2009, Optometry Giving Sight will have distributed US$3 million through its partners to help screen and provide basic eye care services to more than 1.7 million people, train 1550 mid-level eye care personnel and create 101 vision centres / optical workshops in communities in Sri Lanka, East Timor, Africa and Latin America.
