Two days ago, the children of our charity school had a special event in school: a team of doctors came from a close-by eye hospital and every single child of our school received a check-up – completely for free!
An eye check-up doesn’t seem like a big thing to a lot of people. It is however when the doctor’s fees cost you a complete day’s work and any treatment would cost you at least two days’ income on top of that! Glasses come at least at a week’s income – can you afford that?
This is the situation of our school children’s families. They use the daily earned money for their meals. If they spend money for a doctor, they do it when it is really serious, not to be cured by home remedies or simply time and thus definitely not for preventative check-ups. That’s how minor and even bigger problems with the eyesight of children often remain undetected and thus worsen over the course of time due to a lack of treatment.
That’s how the team of doctors did a great work day before yesterday, checking every child’s eye, having them test their eyesight themselves and checking on the exact number for the required glasses. Of our nearly 250 children, 32 children will now get glasses and seven of them have to go to the hospital to have further checkups. They may need bigger treatment or have such high numbers in their glasses that they need to be thoroughly checked to make sure there is nothing else that needs attention!
It is amazing that there are a few children who practically see nothing clear which is further away than three meters – but they never noticed that this was any problem! Our teachers told that they already had suspected something about a few of them.
So now we are eagerly waiting for the glasses to arrive – so that all of our kids have a clear view to the blackboard!
Click here to see pictures of this eye examination