Today I’m heading out to Vancouver airport to visit our great friends at Worldwide Animal Travel who, together with KLM Cargo, very kindly ship children’s glasses to Africa for Seva. Three boxes containing 1,066 of lovely children’s eyeglass frames were donated to Seva Canada by OGI Canada Inc. and soon they’ll be winging their way to Kilimanjaro. Big thanks to Dick Murao at KLM Cargo for his compassion.
I think this is the fourth shipment of children’s frames I’ve sent in the last 2 years. Although adult glasses are easily procured in eastern Africa, children’s frames, especially the infant ones with hooks for behind the ears, are as precious as gold dust. Seva Canada and our partner in Africa, the Kilimanjaro Centre for Community Ophthalmology, is extremely grateful to OGI Canada Inc. for this very generous donation. Thanks Guy, Jamie and Sue for all your kindness!
The number one intervention for children with low vision is refraction and the prescription of the appropriate glasses. When I was in Tanzania in September 2008 attending a workshop on childhood cataract, I heard many sad and frustrating stories about the lack of kids’ glasses. A young girl was washing in the river and her glasses fell off and were lost. By the time she was seen by an eye specialist two years later and given a new pair of glasses, she had lost much of her vision, never to be recovered.
One ophthalmologist from Gondar in Ethiopia told me, “There are so many children with uncorrected refractive error. I work 700 miles from the capital, Addis Ababa, and even if parents can afford them and want to buy children’s glasses, it is impossible to get them. They may not even find children’s frames in the capital.”
Without glasses, children cannot reach their potential and many risk blindness from ambylopia. Providing children with the glasses they need is an urgent issue. Thank you OGI!
