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.’
The new initiative has brought together a variety of civil society and public-private stakeholders with experience in eye health to develop the vision catalyst fund over the coming years. The fund aims to ‘accelerate systems change’ and facilitate improved access to universal eye services for patients.
One such stakeholder has been philanthropist James Chen, who has become the fund’s first contributor after committing $10million to the cause. ‘I am delighted to commit $10m to the Vision Catalyst Fund and become its first funder,’ he said.
‘The issue of poor vision is unique in terms of the number of people affected, the simplicity of the solution which in most cases is a pair of glasses, and high returns for both improving people’s lives and the local economy.’