Help Support Our Vision for Children
Optometry Giving Sight has issued a challenge to optometrists to donate the fees from their eye exams on Thursday, 11 October – World Sight Day – to help the estimated 13 million children who are blind or vision impaired simply because they do not have access to an eye exam and a pair of glasses.
Optometrists, staff, patients and students are also being asked to show their support by signing up to a regular monthly or annual donation on or before World Sight Day.
“If every practice in the US, UK, Australia and Canada were to donate the fees from their eye exams on World Sight Day – or if every optometrist was to become a regular donor at $25 (£10) per month – then we would be well on the way to be raising the funds needed to eliminate refractive error blindness by the year 2020” said Professor Brien Holden, Executive Chair and CEO of Optometry Giving Sight.
According to Professor Holden, it can cost just $5 (£2.50) to provide an eye exam, a pair of glasses and residual training for staff in countries that lack eye care services. This alone could be enough to save a person from a life condemned to impaired vision - where children can’t learn, adults can’t work and the elderly lose their dignity and independence.
Professor Holden cited the example of children in east Africa who were being educated in schools for the blind – when all they needed was an eye exam and a pair of glasses to see clearly. As a result, some spent years in each grade because they were unable to see the blackboard. He said that thanks to the support of optometrists from around the world, many of these children had now successfully completed their schooling and were studying to become accountants, engineers – and even optometrists!!
To register for the World Sight Day Challenge please click here.
World Sight Day is an initiative of VISION 2020: The Right to Sight and is supported by the World Health Organization (WHO); the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) and more than 80 non government organisations with the shared goal of eliminating avoidable blindness by the year 2020, in order to give all people in the world the right to sight. The theme for 2007 is: VISION for Children.
