Crisis hits record during Christmas period

A Crisis at Christmas team of 85 volunteering optometrists and dispensing opticians conducted a record breaking 363 full consultations with homeless Londoners over seven days in December 2015.

The annual seven day service, which is run by charity Crisis in partnership with the Vision Care for Homeless People service (VCHP) saw 60 more eye exams performed than the previous year.

Patients required 242 single vision lenses, 68 pairs of bifocals and 82 ready readers, with 24 referred for further investigations. Several of these patients were dispensed with specs ranging between -8.00 and -10.00D.

The VCHP general manager David Brown said: ‘We had a chap in his thirties referred by the Crisis doctors to see us because of frontal headaches. This had been happening for two years whenever he looked closely at anything. Our optometrist found that he was significantly long sighted. He immediately saw the difference with his new glasses and was delighted.’