World Sight Day

With World Sight Day (October 13) just around the corner Jim is supporting international blindness prevention charity ORBIS to help in their fight against avoidable blindness.

"I recently became aware of ORBIS and the amazing work they do as they try to rid the world of avoidable blindness.

I know only too well the importance and necessity of good eye sight. It was only for my mother’s perseverance and patience that I have any sight at all in my left eye. A weak eye can be helped if the person is encouraged to use it consistently from a young age, so it was necessary to temporarily block my good right eye. My mother insisted that I wore glasses with the right lens frosted but I was only four years of age and kept peering over the top so she resorted to eventually putting a patch on my eye. I hated it but I would not have the vision that I have now if she hadn’t done this for me, nor would I have been able to fulfil a life long dream of becoming a helicopter pilot. I am so grateful that I had access to the best treatment; however, the sad fact is that most children in developing countries don’t and we need to change that.

Thursday 13 th October is World Sight Day, and I urge everyone to spend just a few minutes on ORBIS's website or simply give them a call (+44 (0) 20 7608 7260) to learn more about global blindness and what you and I can do to eliminate it. I hope you will all be just as moved to offer your support as I was."

World Sight Day is a joint initiative celebrated worldwide by leading local and international sight saving charities and aims to raise awareness of the overwhelming task faced by eye health care professionals throughout the developing world. A staggering 37 million people are blind, yet 28 million, or 75%, go blind needlessly, purely from want of access to affordable, quality treatment and preventative measures. Every five seconds a person in our world loses their sight – currently an estimated 124 million people are visually impaired and are at risk of going blind. The fact that 90% of the world’s blind live in developing countries presents a huge challenge for organisations such as ORBIS to ensure that treatment, which is readily available in richer countries, is brought to where the need is greatest.

ORBIS’s response to this challenge is based on its mission of ‘give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day, but teach a man to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime.’ Through its medical training programmes on board the unique Flying Eye Hospital and in local partner hospitals, ORBIS medical volunteers offer free treatment to patients and pass on invaluable skills and knowledge to eye care professionals in less fortunate positions. Through further support in terms of equipment repairs and maintenance, and financial aid, local partners are left with an increased capacity to look after their patients for years to come.

ORBIS was founded 23 years ago and has established permanent country programme offices in five nations – Bangladesh, China, Ethiopia, India and Vietnam. ORBIS has conducted over 600 medical training programmes in more than 80 countries and has provided invaluable training to 72,000 medical professionals.

Anyone who would like to join Jim in supporting ORBIS should visit www.orbis.org.uk or call +44 (0) 20 7608 7260.

Read How People's Lives Are Affected

A year ago we reported on a particular patient who we came across during an ORBIS Flying Eye Hospital programme in Kunming in the South of China. Mr Guiromg Hu was rapidly losing his sight due to bilateral cataracts, but without the necessary means to pay for surgery, he saw ORBIS as his last hope of ever seeing again.

As ORBIS volunteer Dr Kenneth Wolf was about to commence surgery, he told the local eye doctors gathered in the Flying Eye Hospital classroom; “I hear this fellow wants to play ping-pong again. Why don’t we try and make him see well enough to do just that!”

And that’s exactly what he did. Already the following day when the eye patch was removed, his vision had recovered to 20/40 – a dramatic and life-changing improvement.

Fast-forward to October 2005 and Mr Hu vividly remembers the experience. “All the ORBIS staff were fantastic and very caring. Being blind is terrible and very painful; it affected my attitude and mental health. Being given back my sight has meant happiness and convenience.”

As for the ping-pong, Mr Hu has only one complaint; “I am playing again and have become very good, but the problem is that I am running out of willing and good opponents!”

Beyond saving Mr Hu from spending the rest of his life in blindness, the real effect of Dr Wolf’s five days in Kunming goes much further. The Chinese doctor, Dr Hong Zhang, to whom Dr Wolf tirelessly illustrated diagnostic and surgical techniques, explains how the whole community benefited from the programme; “In the year that has passed I have done nearly 400 operations using the skills Dr Wolf taught me, and even better, I have shared this knowledge with more than twenty doctors from rural clinics throughout the province, enabling them to better serve their patients. Because of ORBIS, the reputation of our hospital has improved, invoking a sense of trust in our patients.”

Far from being a unique example, this is the kind of story you come across over and over again. With ORBIS having carried out more than 600 medical training programmes in 23 years, its impact on eliminating avoidable blindness is truly immeasurable.