Vision centre for Kolonnawa

Standard Chartered Bank in partnership with the International Centre for Eye care Education (ICEE) gifted a vision centre to the community of Kolonnawa with an aim in providing affordable eye care for the needy and less privileged.

Acting CEO of Standard Chartered Bank Anirvan Ghosh Dastidar officially declared open the centre recently. This is the second optical workshop that was opened under the Phase IV Bank-sponsored Colombo Urban Comprehensive Eye Care (CEC) project which provides free examination and cost effective spectacles to those who cannot afford otherwise. In its current Phase, Standard Chartered Group, under its' Seeing is Believing (SiB) program will invest USD 20 million, half-raised and half-matched by the Bank, across 20 cities where the Bank is present to provide eye care services to 20 million people. USD 1 million will be channelled through the Group to Sri Lanka, to support the Bank's implementation partners, Sight Savers International (SSI) and the International Centre for Eye care Education (ICEE), to work with the Ministry of Health (MOH) during a five year period.

Dastidar affirmed Standard Chartered Bank's commitment to eradicate curable blindness in Sri Lanka and also went on to say that it is the Bank's privilege to have worked with the ICEE in Sri Lanka for the past two years; fighting together to eradicate curable blindness in Sri Lanka, taking one step at a time.

Supported by SiB Funds, the Kolonnawa Vision Centre aims at minimizing avoidable blindness, specifically targeting the growing problem of uncorrected refractive error.

The Bank's implementation partners will work towards achieving this goal through a series of key objectives: to strengthen access to primary eye care services among poor urban communities; to strengthen school eye health services; to establish within the communities the sustainable delivery of refractive error services through vision centres, optical labs, and workshops.