This is the slogan created by the Rotary Club of Llanfairfechan and Penmaenmawr in North Wales. They collected hundreds of pairs of pre-loved glasses from the public and sent them to the Rotary Club of Hoedspruit.
Here Rotary donated to the Tshemba Foundation, a non-profit medical volunteer organization that is dedicated to improving the quality of health in rural communities. Hundreds of pairs of prescription glasses have been painstakingly sorted by optometrist, Leoni Joubert, a volunteer at Tshemba, ready for distribution to those who need them.
The Tshemba Foundation’s eye care programme is one of the lead components of Tshemba’s agenda. It is divided into hospital-based and outreach-based initiatives. In the hospital programme, which takes place at Tintswalo Hospital, they conduct cataract surgery drives once or twice a month, in their fully equipped and stocked operating theatre. This is done in partnership with the Tintswalo Hospital management and theatre staff. Additionally, they support prevention, correction, and referral systems in the fully equipped Tintswalo Hospital eye clinic. They truly do help people see their future.
Their outreach programme sees volunteer doctors and optometrists, Tshemba staff, new partner Onesight, and school health nurses from the Department of Health involved in screening the vision of schoolchildren.
Staff members at Tshemba identified an urgent need for two specialist pieces of equipment to help them in their outreach work: one, a portable tonometer, which is used to measure pressure within the eye, thus flagging possible glaucoma. This is an issue in the local population, but a preventable disease when caught in the early the stages. The other piece of equipment, a vertometer or lensometer, is designed to measure the power of a spectacle lens. Leoni says, “This equipment is enormously helpful with the sorting of the pre-loved spectacles enabling us as accurately as possible assign them to the correct patients”.
Hazel Partington, President of the Rotary Club of Hoedspruit explains: “As a part of the Vision Outreach Project, our club has linked up with Tshemba Foundation to offer support by buying these two important ophthalmic instruments”.
A very exciting handover and demonstration of how the instruments work took place February at the Tshemba Volunteer Centre Moditlo, and the instruments were immediately put to use in a week-long vision outreach program in Acornhoek.
An important message conveyed to Rotary during this handover was the additional need for ordinary sunglasses and ready-made readers for some of the patients who undergo eye surgery. The appeal to our community is to collect unused non-prescription sunglasses and ready-made readers for us to donate to this important cause.
For any extra information regarding donations contact: Michael Henderson on email: clauss@iafrica.com
People donating sunglasses/readers for this project can do so at Keystone Café, Shop 15 Kamogelo Centre or at KYK Optometrists, Shop 1, Leadwood Centre (Spar centre)
