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Sunday, February 23, 2025

Pupils in 40 primary schools to benefit from free eyecare

by

Samaki
138 days ago
20241009
EyeNet Limited managing director Dr Robin Seemongal-Dass, left, chats with Education Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly at the launch of the second phase of the Adopt-a-School Vision Screening Programme yesterday at the Education Ministry, St Vincent Street, Port-of-Spain.

EyeNet Limited managing director Dr Robin Seemongal-Dass, left, chats with Education Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly at the launch of the second phase of the Adopt-a-School Vision Screening Programme yesterday at the Education Ministry, St Vincent Street, Port-of-Spain.

NICOLE DRAYTON

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Pupils from pri­ma­ry schools across the coun­try are set to ben­e­fit from spe­cial eye­care.

Speak­ing at the launch of the sec­ond phase of the Adopt-a-School Vi­sion Screen­ing Pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly ex­pressed her grat­i­tude to those lead­ing the pro­gramme for help­ing some of the na­tion’s most vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren to ac­cess eye­care test­ing and pre­scrip­tion glass­es.

“Chil­dren in 40 of our pri­ma­ry schools are go­ing to get the ben­e­fit of vi­sion screen­ing, and those who need spec­ta­cles will be pro­vid­ed with this. I could on­ly say how grate­ful the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is,” she said.

The main goal of the pro­gramme, launched in 2020, is to fo­cus on sup­port­ing the ed­u­ca­tion­al needs of stu­dents, and ul­ti­mate­ly in­creas­ing the school per­for­mances of stu­dents and en­sur­ing each child has the re­quire­ments to make a pros­per­ous fu­ture for them­selves.

“We are fo­cus­ing on these pri­ma­ry schools be­cause we want to in­crease stu­dent and school per­for­mance. We want these stu­dents to have the same ben­e­fits that every­one has to suc­ceed,” Dr Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

Yes­ter­day’s launch high­light­ed the chal­lenges that pri­ma­ry school chil­dren face with their vi­sion and the move to ad­dress the is­sue via a part­ner­ship be­tween Unicef, Eye­Net and the min­istry.

Eye­Net Lim­it­ed man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Dr Robin Seemon­gal-Dass ex­plained the im­por­tance of ear­ly de­tec­tion, adding that “up to 80 per cent of a child’s learn­ing de­pends on vi­sion, yet many chil­dren with vi­sion prob­lems go un­di­ag­nosed sim­ply be­cause they don’t know what nor­mal vi­sion looks like.”

Seemon­gal-Dass stressed the need to en­sure that chil­dren have all the re­sources avail­able to them to en­joy a good fu­ture.

“Ad­dress­ing the is­sue that deeply af­fects our chil­dren’s fu­ture is im­por­tant. We must en­sure that every child has ac­cess to the care and re­sources need­ed for a suc­cess­ful ed­u­ca­tion,” he added.


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