Move to reduce blindness and vision impairment
In a move that will ultimately assist the Sri Lankan Ministry for
Healthcare and Nutrition and Healthcare to implement the National Eye
Care Plan, the International Centre for Eyecare Education (ICEE) opened
an office in Colombo this week, aimed at reducing avoidable blindness
and vision impairment due to uncorrected refracted error.
Dr Binara Amarasinghe, President of the College of Ophthalmologists,
attending the opening ceremony, acknowledged that Sri Lanka needs
additional refractive error services: “one of the main areas we have
identified is low vision and refractive errors and I must say in the
peripheral areas there are a lot of people who need this basic spectacle
correction and vision testing and get spectacles to have better vision.”
In February this year, ICEE, the Ministry of Healthcare and
Nutrition, SSI, IRIS, CBM and the College of Ophthalmologists signed a
Memorandum of Understanding to work together to support the
implementation of a Sri Lanka’s National Eye Care Plan.
“This is an exciting time for ICEE in this region. An office in
Colombo will act as an administrative centre which will allow us to
manage projects in consultation with the Ministry of Healthcare and
Nutrition and our in-country partners on a daily basis,” said Professor
Brien Holden, CEO ICEE.
“Preventable blindness and vision impairment is restricting many Sri
Lankan’s from supporting themselves and their families. It is time to
address the gap in accessing eye care, and by assisting the Ministry of
Healthcare and Nutrition, collaborating with local district partners and
other international non-government organizations, I believe we are well
on our way,” he added.
Prof. Holden also pointed out that statistically, people who are
blind and poor living in developing countries will live 15 years less
than someone who is just poor. ICEE first visited Sri Lanka 3 years ago,
after the tsunami. ICEE came to Sri Lanka believing that those affected
had lost everything, including their glasses. However ICEE soon realized
that about 90% of the people they met had never had an eye examination,
let alone a pair of glasses.
Since 2005 ICEE has delivered 38,607 eye examinations and distributed
29,523 pairs of spectacles in Sri Lanka. |
