THE St Lucia Blind Welfare Association in collaboration with the West Virginia Eye Institute recently embarked on the Kids Insight Program aimed at providing support to children with eye problems through vision care, rehabilitation and surgeries at no cost.
Paediatric Eye Surgeon of the West Virginia Eye Institute Terry Schwartz says she is very pleased to continue providing eye care to children as it changes their lives immensely.
“When we first started we had cases of cancer in the eye that we had to deal with. Most of the work that I do had to do with surgery for children that had squints. We also take care of children with cataracts; believe it or not some children have cataract, that it is not just an old person disease. We care for children with glaucoma and again you would think it is something you see in an older person but some of our children are unlucky enough to be born with it. We also provide glasses, so we provide hundreds of glasses prescriptions; we measure and make the glasses for the kids.”
Victoria Hospital Medical Officer Dr Alisha Eugene-Ford applauded the efforts of the team from West Virginia Eye Institute and said the Department of Health will continue supporting the programme.
“Kids Insight is a programme that I think is very beneficial,” Eugene-Ford said. “We at Victoria hospital and I think I can speak for the Ministry of Health, we are very happy when Kids Insight or any team comes down to offer assistance that we need as we have children that have been trying to get certain operations done who may not have been able to come up with the full payment. The Kids Insight Program allows them to be operated on without any cost to the parents of the children. For us, it is very important because I think children are our generation to come and they are our future so if there is anything we can do at Victoria Hospital, we ensure that we invest in our future.”
Staff and physicians of Victoria Hospital also engaged in a knowledge sharing session on eye care and surgery with the team from the West Virginia Eye Institute.