Ugandan children get glasses as organisations join forces

Charity Humanity Direct and glasses provider Glasses On Spec recently pooled their expertise to provide free prescription glasses for needy children in rural Ugandan communities.

Fundraising paid for a Ugandan ophthalmologist to visit schools in remote villages in central Uganda with an autorefractor. While there, she examined more than 2,000 children who had complained of visual problems.

With little or no electricity, classrooms are often dark, meaning children with unaddressed visual impairments find learning from a chalkboard particularly difficult. This can lead to falling behind in education and can contribute to the poverty cycle.

Of the 2,000 children examined 300 were found to need a prescription, with a large proportion of the children presenting as uncorrected myopes. The prescriptions were emailed to Glasses On Spec in the UK where they were glazed, before company director Will Luff flew out to Uganda to fit them.