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Lions Eye Health Program Lions Eye Health Program (LEHP)
LEHP is the main SightFirst-funded initiative for industrialized nations. LEHP is a community-based public awareness initiative that encourages the early detection and timely treatment of glaucoma and diabetic eye disease and the appropriate treatment for low vision. LEHP has been active in the United States, Japan, the British Isles and Ireland, Canada, Australia and Turkey. LEHP has been revamped and improved in the United States. The new LEHP for the United States includes a new CD-ROM format, a new logo and design, a new LEHP Web site and development of new print materials. Perhaps most importantly, everyone interested in eye health can now participate in LEHP, not just Lions clubs. This will help increase eye health awareness.
Project for Elimination of Avoidable Childhood Blindness
A US$3.75 million SightFirst grant provided funding to establish 30 need-based Lions eye care centers in countries all over the globe, aimed especially at delivering preventative, therapeutic, and rehabilitative eye care services for 71 million children. The program is being done in concert with the World Health Organization. The program represents a broad counterattack against preventable childhood blindness.
River Blindness/Trachoma Control
SightFirst has supported more than 114.1 million treatments of river blindness in Africa and Latin America since it forged a partnership with The Carter Center in 1999. The treatments for river blindness have transformed individual lives and communities in 12 countries in Africa and Latin America. In fact, in Latin America, experts foresee eradicating river blindness once and for all by 2010. The grant to the Carter Center also targets trachoma, the world's leading cause of preventable blindness. SightFirst is controlling trachoma among 4.6 million people with zithromax treatments.
SightFirst China Action Project
Completed in 2002, Phase I of LCIF's SightFirst China Action (SFCA) supported 2.1 million cataract surgeries in China and established surgical eye units in 104 rural counties that previously had none. Phase II will once again address blindness on a large scale. A SightFirst grant of US$15.5 million was matched with about US$200 million from the Chinese government. The goal of Phase II is to perform at least 2.5 million cataract surgeries as well as to strengthen eye care infrastructure by creating secondary eye care units at hospitals in 200 underdeveloped counties, provinces and Tibet. To assure sustainable eye care services for the vast populations of rural poor, training courses for paramedics will be created in the western and northern provinces.
Sight for Kids
LCIF and Johnson & Johnson Vision Care have collaborated to develop Sight for Kids, a program that provides vision screenings and eye health education for children. Sight for Kids screens children for refractive error and other vision problems. More than 6 million children in Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, China, Malaysia, Hong Kong, India and the Philippines have been screened through the program. It is likely program activity will expand in 2008 to Sri Lanka, China and Indonesia. Of those screened, 125,600 have been referred to physicians for further evaluation, 21,200 have received glasses and 21,700 have been treated for various eye conditions. |
