Rotary Club of Hoedspruit calls on residents to donate their old reading glasses
The Rotary Club of Hoedspruit is calling on residents to donate their old reading glasses and sunglasses to those in need.
Two Rotary clubs in North Wales in the UK, Llanfairfechan and Penmaenmawr, collected hundreds of pre-loved prescribed glasses from the public and sent them to Hoedspruit. The Hoedspruit Rotarians donated the glasses to the Tshemba Foundation, a non-profit medical volunteer organisation that is dedicated to improving the quality of health in rural communities. Leoni Joubert, a voluteer optometrist at Tshemba, painstakingly sorted these glasses for distribution.
The Tshemba Foundation’s eye care programme is divided into hospital-based and outreach-based initiatives. Cataract surgeries are conducted twice a month at Tintswalo Hospital in partnership with the hospital management and theatre staff. “Additionally, Tshemba supports prevention, correction, and referrals at the fully equipped eye clinic at Tintswalo Hospital.
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The programme sees volunteer doctors and optometrists, Tshemba staff, a as well as a new partner, Onesight, and school health nurses from the Department of Health, involved in screening schoolchildren’s vision,” says Hazel Partington, president of the Hoedspruit club. Staff members at Tshemba also identified an urgent need for two specialist pieces of equipment, a portable tonometer and a vertometer to help them in their outreach work.
“A portable tonometer is used to measure the pressure within the eye, thus flagging up possible glaucoma, which is a health issue in the local population, but a preventable disease when caught in the early stages. “The other piece of equipment, a vertometer or lensometer, is designed to measure the power of a spectacle lens.
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“As a part of the Vision Outreach Project, our club has linked up with Tshemba Foundation to offer support by buying these two important ophthalmic instruments,” she adds. “This equipment is enormously helpful with the sorting of the pre-loved spectacles enabling us as accurately as possible assign them to the correct patients,” says Joubert. “The instruments were immediately put to use in a weeklong vision outreach campaign in Acornhoek, saving sight and making lives better,” says Partington.
“An important message conveyed to Rotary during this meeting was the additional need for ordinary sunglasses and readymade readers for some of the patients who undergo eye surgery. We would like to appeal to our community to collect unused nonprescription sunglasses and readymade readers for us to donate to this important cause.” Glasses can be handed in at Keystone Café, Shop 15 Kamogelo Centre or at KYK Optometrists, Leadwood Centre
