The Rimbey Eye Care Centre is setting their sights on helping local patients and people halfway across the world that desperately need eye care.
Drs. Lampard, Rudyk, Lund, Hesterman, Stevenson and associates are taking up the World Sight Day Challenge by pledging a donation from their practice to help some of the estimated 300 million people in the developing world who are blind or vision impaired simply for lack of an eye exam and a pair of glasses.
“Here in Canada, we take things like eye glasses for granted,” explains Dr Hesterman. “They’re readily available to those who need them. But in many countries, optometrists and the equipment needed to diagnose problems with eye sight are very scarce, and eye glasses are a luxury all too often out of reach.”
The doctors and staff are planning to celebrate the World Sight Day Challenge on Oct. 10, hoping to raise community awareness and inviting their patients to join them in supporting the cause. Rimbey Eye Care will match all funds raised.
In the developing world, making a living is often a huge challenge. Serious vision problems add to that burden, threatening livelihoods and even lives. Children who need glasses but don’t have access to them are often left out of school, reducing their chances of living a better life and becoming contributing citizens in their communities.
Optometrists around the world will be united in taking up the World Sight Day Challenge, an annual fundraising campaign of Optometry Giving Sight, a global initiative specifically targeting the prevention of blindness and impaired vision due to refractive error (the need for glasses). Last year, over $250,000 was raised and is currently providing vision care, training and infrastructure support in Sri Lanka, East Africa, East Timor and South Africa.
About Optometry Giving Sight
Thanks to the support of industry partners, Optometry Giving Sight guarantees that 85 per cent of all funds raised go directly to programs that give sight to those in need. Optometry Giving Sight is a joint initiative of the World Optometry Foundation, the International Centre for Eyecare Education and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness. Industry sponsors include CIBA VISION, the Institute for Eye Research, Optometric Services Inc. (OSI), the Canadian Association of Optometrists, Centennial Optical, and Viscon Contact Lens Manufacturing Ltd.
About the World Sight Day Challenge
World Sight Day is an initiative of VISION 2020: The Right to Sight and is supported by the World Health Organization, the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness and more than 80 non-government organizations 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 2008 is, The Aging Eye.