Welcome to the Gift of Sight projects web site.
Because no other organization seems to recognize the need for infrastructure development that is perfectly suited to Rotary's resources, Gift of Sight projects focus on the establishment and support of eye bank processing and coordination centres, the sponsorship of volunteer eye donation and recovery teams and the development and publicising of cornea donation awareness projects.
Following the lead of Past Rotary International Presidents Jonathon Majiyagbe of Nigeria, Bitchai Rattakul of Thailand and Frnak Devlyn of Mexico, who urged all Rotarians in his year to LEND A HAND and SOW THE SEEDS OF LOVE. We strive to expand the outreach of Rotary's helping hands to restore sight to an estimated 60 to 70 million needlessly blind in the world. Our spcific goal is to increase the number and funding of Rotary Avoidable Blindness projects as just one further Rotary effort to CREATE AWARENESS and TAKE ACTION, because REAL HAPPINESS IS HELPING OTHERS.
The are several differnt reasons that people are blinded. Some cause irreversible sight loss, but the vast majority, as much as 80% to 85% can be prevented or reversed by existing medicines, relatively simple surgery or, in many cases, just by providing a pair of proper eyeglasses.
In large measure because cataract is the most common form of reversible blindness, most current Rotary efforts have focused on eye projects to provide cataract surgeries. These surgeries can be funded VERY inexpensively --- in Mexico at 3 per $100; in India at 5 per $100; and in Nepal at up to 8 per $100. Delhi Rotary leader PDG Manjit Sawnhey has offered to do as many as can be funded at 6 per $100 dollars -- that's less than $17 per operation!
As well, we have a phenomenally dedicated Rotary leader in Chennai, PDG Rekha Shetty, who is organising a large number of diverse projects in her part of the world (South Asia). She has been ably assisted by dedicated Avoidable Blindness Initiative (and last year Task Force member) Gabriel Minder, a Swiss past president of a Rotary club in France. Rtn Gabriel is organizing European Rotary clubs' support of Avoidable Blindness projects.
Rotary's broad base of membership in over 200 nations and geographic regions gives it the ability to provide the necessary infrastructure resource to develop Gift of Sight projects that focus on supporting eye bank processing and coordination centres and the development of cornea donation awareness projects.
India alone has several million corneally blind, but over 120 other countries need eye donation awareness and support services as well. Cornea transplantation services are deficient throughout all of Africa and much of Asia and Latin America as well. The factors that lead to corneal blindness ---- injuries, infections and a lack of vitamin A ---- are endemic to all areas with large concentrations of poverty and lack of sanitation and health services.....
Moreover, corneal blindness, unlike cataract, is an affliction primarily of young people, resulting in a lifetime of blindness.
Several dozen more eye bank processing and coordination centres are needed in India alone as well as over a hundred elsewhere in Asia, Africa, Latin America --- and even in Eastern Europe --- Tieing in with Rotary in the development and funding of Gift of Sight projects allows us to take full advantage of the Rotary infrastructure as a model, and to utilise other organisations in other countries where Rotary clubs are scarce, particularly in Africa, where corneal collection and transplantation programmes are most desperately needed.
Another website "computerdummy.com"" has links to several additional pages of corneal projects that need funding in countries virtually throughout the world. Many just need proper equipment; many others need technical expertise to simply establish a proper eyebank; and all need promotion of eye donation programmes to increase the number of corneas available for transplantation.
Other worthy projects in this area include the following:
--- We could fund a number of surgical fellowships at the L.V. Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad for less than $5,000 each. These are particularly valuable as they can provide 15 months of advanced training for ophthalmic surgeons from developing countries.
--- In cooperation with the ACADEMY OF AMERICAN OPHTHALMOLOGY, $5,000 also will provide a visiting fellowship for doctors from developing countries to come to the AAO meeting each year. These ophthalmologists spend several weeks in the care of leading ophthalmology programmes and institutions here in the USA on either side of the AAO convention, learning procedures and gaining a breadth of experience that is invaluable back in their own countries.
--- The Rotary Foundation (TRF) also hve funded a large 3-H project in Tanzania in support of onchocerciasis eradication that's river blindness --- in cooperation with Merck Pharmaceuticals. Since 1987 Merck has donated over 700 million mectizan tablets to those in infected areas in over 30 countries, primarily in Africa -- This is a challenging five year project sponsored originally by the Rotary Club of Bonds Meadow, Maryland, USA, in Rotary District 7620.
--- As well, there have been many targetted projects to provide vitamin A supplementation for children at risk from a deficiency of this all-important preventive measure against childhood blindness. And there is a large project application to provide large scale Vitamin A supplementation to children in several countries, but no specific information can be until we get further down the application process.
--- There is room for the development of support for glaucoma research, but that has not gone beyond the talking stage at this point. We have good reason to believe that there is a serious potential for Rotary to help reduce the research time by as much as one-half to get new glaucoma treatment modalities to patients if we simply focus on this helping provide critical research funds of less than a million dollars.
--- Finally, we have many projects supporting collection and distribution of eyeglasses to the needy ---- a large scale project is under way in my own District 7620 that not only is taking old glasses donated through the Lions Clubs Internatioinal network, using young Rotaracters to process the specs and then Rotarians are delivering them to the Yucatan...... Strange to say, there are OVER ten million people in the world who are functionally without sight simply because they do not have a pair of eyeglasses......
After cataract, untreated refraction error is the second largest form of avoidable / treatable / reversible blindness . Recent research indicates that there are over 66.5 million functionally blind in the world today, inceasing at a rate of nearly 1.5 million per year. And five of every six , OR MORE THAN 55 MILLION!!! could be treated or have their affliction reversed by proper treatment modalities. Over 45% of all blindness, representing more than 30 million persons, is from cataract, and more than 15%, comprising over 10 million persons, is from refractive error. Corneal blindnessand glaucoma vie for third place, with somewhere between 4.6 and 6 million blind from corneal injuries and diseases and an equal or greater number with various forms ofglaucoma.
At this time, maculardegeneration of the retina is not reversible - in fact, this insidious form of progressive eye disease is very little understood and certainly at this point is well beyond Rotary's ability to fund the large-scale necessary research into its causes and potential treatment. And this only emphasises how very important it is for us to recognize what we in Rotary can do -- and do effectively-- for we do have limitations on the resources we have to allocate to our good works around the world.
For further information on how you can help, simply reply to us via the "CONTACT INFORMATION" link in the left bar, or send an email to cd@computerdummy.com or to interact@bigplanet.com . Any or ALL the the people mentioned on this page will be most happy to help provide you with specific opportunities to help eliminate unnecesary blindness, so we hope you will want to contact them yourself. We all encourage your interest, and hope you will find an area in which you feel you and any organization with which you are affilited can help.
We can only assure you that helping others to see will be a most rewarding experience!
Yours in Rotary humanitarian service,
Rob Ketron, PDG 7620
interact@bigplanet.com
We will be under construction for a while more because we are off to India with Rotary International Past President Frank Devlyn. Well, we're here in south India Rotary South Asia Resource Center office and are having a wonderful time being hosted by PDG Rekha Shetty.
