Vision fund for Commonwealth established

The Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust has announced a $1bn vision catalyst fund to increase access to eye care for people across the Commonwealth.

Addressing a Commonwealth Day Service attended by the Queen at Westminster Abbey this week, CEO of Peek Vision, Dr Andrew Bastawrous, said: ‘For the first time in human history, it is within our power to eliminate avoidable blindness and poor vision, for everybody, everywhere. Every country in the Commonwealth has the opportunity to transform their citizens’ eye health, in a matter of years, not generations.’Dr Astrid Bonfield CBE, chief executive of the Trust, said she was ‘delighted’ with the work to ‘help develop and progress this exciting and ambitious initiative with the potential to create new approaches to funding eye health.’