GLENHILLS resident, Cathryn Aylett has urged the north Durban community to support and sponsor eye screenings for her newest initiative. Aylett who works with the Bright Eyes Centre (BEC) for Visually Impaired Children is actively involved in fundraising for the non profit organisation and to help fund their newest initiative, the Bheka Project.
The project, which launched this year, is a drive to screen 1 000 school children across the province ensuring all grade ones have 20/20 vision in 2020.
According to Aylett a donation of R200 can help sponsor an eye screening. BEC has partnered with Peek A Vu, using a machine Plusoptix Vision Screener, which is used across 98 per cent of pediatric practices in Europe.
Last week, Aylett launched the project at Columbia Primary School in Greenwood Park, which caters for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
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“Columbia Primary School is our first sponsored screening which is just awesome. We were able to screen 21 Grade R learners and my hope is screen the entire school which goes all the way up to Grade 7. What has been encouraging has been the corporation from the school and the learners. Through this project we’ve also discovered how important it is to educate parents on the value of eye-screenings using this type of technology. I think some parents feel there isn’t a need for an eye-screening as they don’t think it’s important. Or they simply rely on acuity tests which use snellen charts and that’s not enough,” she explained.
“The cutting edge technology means we make no physical contact with the child and the machine uses infrared technology in the form of refraction measurement to determine whether there is an underlying visual impairment.
The screening takes seconds and a single click of the device and we have an immediate pass or refer suit. Most little ones have no idea they have just had their eyes tested.
Rishi Ajodapersad, principal of Columbia Primary School said he was blown away by the support from the Bheka Project.
“When Cathryn approached the school I was incredibly humbled by the Bheka Project. We are so grateful to have her on board and I feel this will benefit the learners in the long-run. When she explained how this technology works I got a sense of why early intervention was needed. This eye screening is superior as ordinary school vision/acuity tests do not test refractive errors accurately. The sooner visual disorders are detected and treated the greater the probability of successful treatment,” he said.
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