Funds help children see a brighter future
Phindile (left) was one of 2,072 children who were refracted by an ICEE optometrist and given a pair of glasses. She attends Acacia Primary in KwaZulu-Natal. Aged 11, she has dreams of becoming an actress.
“The sad part is that she sat the whole year not knowing she had defective vision,” said Mr Jacob, Phindile’s grade 7 teacher.
Phindile was mildly hyperopic, which meant she struggled with reading. However, her distance vision was also causing her problems, because she was unable to see the chalk board. ICEE was able to supply Phindile with the pair of glasses she needed to correct her vision problem and she improved tremendously.
“Fortunately ICEE came along and everything took off from there for her,” said Mr Jacob.
Acacia Primary is situated in a low socio-economic area that greatly benefits from programs like Giving Sight to Africa. “It is an exceptionally excellent program, especially in an environment like ours, where the larger community cannot even afford to live… but the ICEE coming here to them, it certainly helped,” said Mr Jacob.
ICEE optometrist Sabera reflects on the importance of the program by saying, “It touches the heart. You get there and the kids haven’t had an eye test ever. The testing is being done at the right time because this is where the development occurs. The right stage to pick it up is primary school levels – so it is perfect”.
Now that she has a new pair of glasses, things have changed for Phindile. “It looks beautiful and everything has changed…feels great,” she said.
Over the coming year ICEE plans to continue training hundreds of primary health care workers and aims to establish 11 Eye Clinics within District Hospitals, as well as continuing its screening programs for adults and children. Giving Sight to South Africa is a priority funding project for Optometry Giving Sight. This project is also the first to qualitatively and quantitatively define the role of optometry in the district health system and it is hoped the outcomes of this project will expand the role of optometrists in Africa.
