Report of Rotary Club of Leven weekly meeting on 28th March 2017
President Julie Brownlie welcomed guest speaker David Huggin who had travelled from Stirling to talk to us about the Guildford Rotary Eye Project.
David gave us a bit of background about his working life, most recently as an administrator with Forth Valley NHS, but with a career focused on eye problems and disease. On retiring, he had responded to an appeal for someone to speak on behalf of the Guildford Eye Project. He now travels all over central Scotland in this role.
David continued with some statistics about blindness. 50 million people worldwide are blind, with a high proportion in India, while 250 million have low vision as measured by the recognised clinical definition. 19% affected live in poor countries with hot climates which propagate eye disease through a high incidence of micro-organisms, bad hygiene and lack of clean running water. 80% of all blindness is avoidable.
Blindness affects 0.5-1% of the population in some areas, 60% of whom are women. This compares with only 0.2% in the UK. Sight problems lead to poor education, poverty and early death. Many blind people will need care and this can result in another non-working member in a family. Poor diet is a factor as cornea health in particular is affected by Vitamin A levels.
Two common infections are River Blindness and Trachoma. While highly effective drugs are available and are sometimes donated free by manufacturers, uncorrected refractive errors persist through a shortage of spectacles.
The Guidford Eye Project deals with cataract blindness by establishing eye hospitals in areas of need and carrying out up to 180,000 operations per year. After the eye’s own lens has been replaced by a fixed focus manufactured one, spectacles are more than often needed to correct vision.
David then talked about funding. A £5 donation is matched by the Rotary Foundation and a further £5 is sought from local Rotary clubs. The £15 raised covers the cost of one cataract operation. Rotary Global Grants can provide the £40000 is required to equip a new eye hospital. An interesting idea in generating funds is for better off patients to be asked for a contribution after treatment to help fund operations for the less well off. No one seems to have a problem with this.
The Guildford Rotary Eye Project is now trademarked as “Global Sight Solutions”.
Rotarian David Pirie gave a vote of thanks in which he paid tribute to David’s lifetime of work dedicated to treating eye problems and blindness. He thought that the work of this charity showed how modest sums of money could produce major results.
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