Group gives aid to ‘blind’ pupils

CEBU, Philippines - Uncorrected refractive error (URE) is the most common cause of vision impairment worldwide and the second most common cause of blindness, according to the World Health Organization.

WHO, on its website, said one child goes blind every minute. It is estimated that over seven million people become blind every year.

This prompted the local counterpart of Lions Club International, a private organization, to advance its advocacy on sight conservation.

Around 30,000 public elementary students across Central Visayas benefited from the organization’s 12-year-old program dubbed as “Sight for Kids,” which seeks to help children who are suffering from visual impairment.

Stephen Yap, the Lions District 301 B2 governor, said they also distributed around 1,500 pairs of eyeglasses since 2005.

“The project has been running for 12 years already and still ongoing…The aim is to eliminate avoidable blindness,” he told reporters yesterday during yesterday’s radio-live forum dubbed Kapihan sa PIA organized by the Philippine Information Agency-Cebu province.

The project, he said, targets to screen all public elementary school children nationwide.

 For the past 12 years, the organization served more than 3.5 million screened children and distributed more than 120,000 eyeglasses worldwide.

Every year, it distributes 10,000 lenses to public school students in different parts of the country.

Yap said the project has given more opportunities for visually-impaired children to be more participative and more productive at school.

“We prioritize students from public schools since they cannot afford to do check-ups. With poor eyesight, they will have hard time learning things,” said Yap.

 “It is better that as young as elementary, we can already correct their vision error,” he said, adding that they are also holding series of lectures on eye health care among teachers, pupils and parents in partnership with the Department of Health.

Providing access to eye care, he said, reduces the magnitude of avoidable blindness.

According to WHO, the causes of avoidable blindness are frequently associated with poverty and lack of access to quality eye care services. Avoidable blindness is more common in the poorest of the poor, women and marginalized populations.

Ninety percent of the world's blind people live in developing countries; there are at least 9 million blind people in India, six million in China and seven million in Africa. People who live in the developing world are five to ten times more likely to go blind than people who live in highly industrialized countries.

WHO said an estimated 180 million people worldwide are visually disabled. Of those, between 40 and 45 million persons are blind.

Due to growing populations and ageing, these numbers are expected to double by the year 2020 making a colossal human tragedy even worse, stalling development and denying a basic human right. (FREEMAN)