Cdv and Federottica together for the children of Ghana

Cdv - Commissione Difesa Vista and Federottica (Associazione Federativa Nazionale degli Ottici Optometristi) have joined forces to assign funds and professional resources to the Ghana project promoted at international level by Wco (World Council of Optometrist) and Who (World Health Organization).

The objective of the '2020 Vision-the right to see' project is to create an educational program which will be shared by the international optometric and ophthalmic organizations: the former will contribute to the prevention of sight inefficiency caused by uncorrected refractive errors, the latter will be engaged in preventing ocular diseases.

For the entire month of December, the Commissione Difesa Vista, with the collaboration and support of Federottica, will allocate part of its financial resources to the 2020 Vision project in Ghana.

The state of Ghana, West Africa, is fighting for the need to guarantee good public health conditions for its 21 million inhabitants. The per capita cost for public health is only 45 dollars and life expectancy is an average of 57 years. Attention to eye problems is very limited, mainly due to the lack of trained professionals.

As a consequence, children are particularly affected and they are suffering from the disabling effects of uncorrected refractive errors: their education and day-to-day functions are undermined by poor sight which, in the majority of cases, could easily be resolved simply by wearing glasses.

There is a precise relationship between learning problems and sight: vision problems interfere with the way children perform and limit their potential, which triggers off a spiral of inefficiency. The country is not in fact able to meet the costs of sight health care, and the lack of progress at school prejudices the children's future economic progress.

In the light of these important implications, many countries have established assessment standards by screening the sight of babies and children of pre-school age. But the economic and human resources required to implement these initiatives are causing Ghana's economy some concern.

For this reason, Federottica is actively collaborating with Wco, the Optometrists Association in Ghana, the University of Science and Technology of Kwame Nkrumah, and the University of Cape Coast. Through the network of optometrists, an awareness-raising campaign about sight problems will be disseminated and children of between 5 and 15 years will be supplied with glasses.

The hub of the action will involve hospitals, clinics and schools in urban and rural areas of Accra, Kumasi, Cape Coast, Hohoe, Wa and Yendi. In this way, the aim is to achieve the objective of returning efficient vision to thousands of children, of helping to give them a basis for healthy growth, and building the prospects for a better future.

Thanks to Cdv's financial support and the collaboration of Federottica, optometrists in Ghana will be able to give children in need concrete help by carrying out screenings and supplying free services and glasses to those who need them.

The project will cover schools, families, teachers, government bodies, social bodies and religious organizations. A targeted and far-reaching strategy will aim at optimizing the use of the community's resources and ensure campaign impact.