This year as well, Essilor Italia provides its support to Brazil

Massimo Barberis: "Our mission is to provide a better quality of life by improving the eyesight of an increasingly higher number of people" This year as well, Essilor Italia provides its support to the pro bono initiative promoted by the Eye Doctors of the Hospital of Vicenza together with Ottica 2000 in favour of poverty-stricken people in need of proper eye care in developing countries.   For years, staff members from the Eye Specialist Department of the Hospital of Vicenza have provided aid to destitute areas in support of poor families requiring treatment for eye defects and eye diseases. The project is implemented with the active collaboration of Ottica 2000, which has been operating in the area since 1985 with 2 sales outlets in Vicenza and Caldogno.   This year, the support was focused on the state and municipal schools of Tamandaré, a town near Recife − capital of the state of Pernambuco, in north-eastern Brazil − and Ribeirao, one of the main cities of the state of São Paulo. In little over two weeks, thanks to the help of the Prefect and the "AltinoVentura" Foundation − the local partner of CBM Onlus providing specialist eye care services free of charge in favour of the poorest − the team has managed to visit children, young boys and girls as well as adults for a total of over one thousand five hundred people and plan numerous operations to correct cases of strabismus and cataracts.   Essilor Italia has supported the initiative by providing ophthalmic lenses to patients in need of prescription glasses. Massimo Barberis, sales and marketing director of Essilor Italia, would like to take this opportunity to reiterate the important corporate mission underlying each operation of the French multinational: "Our mission is to provide a better quality of life by improving the eyesight of an increasingly higher number of people with ever changing needs. We would like to recall that 60% of the global population (4.2 billion) require vision correction, however only 1.7 billion people actually correct their eye defects. A small but important drop in the ocean to enable everyone to see the world better".