Trinidad Eye Hos­pi­tal (TEH) in part­ner­ship with the Es­silor One­Sight Foun­da­tion (EOSF) will do­nate one thou­sand pairs of glass­es. The School Screen­ing Project which com­menced on Oc­to­ber 5 at the Moru­ga Sec­ondary School, will see these glass­es dis­trib­uted to un­der­served school chil­dren across the na­tion, em­pow­er­ing them with the gift of clear vi­sion.

The part­ner­ship was an­nounced in the same month World Sight Day is be­ing ob­served. It is on Oc­to­ber 12. This year, EOSF will be us­ing the theme “The Right to See,” which re­flects the shared be­lief of both com­pa­nies; that good vi­sion is a fun­da­men­tal hu­man right. TEH plans to com­mem­o­rate the day by screen­ing stu­dents at Queens Roy­al Col­lege (QRC) where they will have ac­tiv­i­ties and lec­tures for the stu­dents in store. They will al­so host free eye screen­ings on Wednes­day at their Pasea branch, and on Thurs­day at their San Fer­nan­do branch.

Op­tometrist at Trinidad Eye Hos­pi­tal, Ibra­heem Mo­hammed com­ment­ed on the time­li­ness of this project, and shared some sta­tis­tics about the is­sues fac­ing stu­dents. “Since the pan­dem­ic, we have seen a rise in ju­ve­nile my­opia due to in­creased screen time. Eighty per­cent of class­room learn­ing is vi­su­al, and over twen­ty per­cent of stu­dents have a vi­su­al is­sue where eighty to nine­ty per­cent of those de­fects can be cor­rect­ed with a pair of spec­ta­cles.”

He goes on to say, “It’s moral­ly wrong to let chil­dren fail at school, due to an is­sue that can be eas­i­ly re­me­di­at­ed. Low-in­come fam­i­lies and those with­in rur­al ar­eas ex­pe­ri­ence more ob­struc­tions to prop­er eye care and gen­er­al­ly have less ac­cess to glass­es, yet this re­mains one of the biggest bar­ri­ers in eye­care pro­vi­sion world­wide.”