On July 28th Little Hearts opened its doors to the local community to host an eye-screening day in cooperation with Khmer Sight Foundation so that villagers could come and receive routine vision and eye tests at no expense.
Khmer Sight Foundation is a charity dedicated to improving eyecare in Cambodia, a country with one of the lowest numbers of eye doctors per capita in the world, and where almost 10,000 Cambodians suffer from avoidable blindness every year. Most eye problems are preventable or curable; Khmer Sight hopes to eliminate avoidable blindness in Cambodia by offering free eye exams to the needy and training eye care health professionals so that the country may become self-reliant in the provision of safe and effective eye care.
Little Hearts kids were more than happy to participate in this effort and even got some hands-on ophthalmology training themselves! On a Thursday, 12 of our kids were invited to the Khmer Sight eye clinic in Phnom Penh to have their own eyes checked by the Foundation’s ophthalmologists and to get some instruction on how the community eye screening at our campus would unfold.
Armed with this knowledge, the kids began to set up for the incoming patients on the following Saturday at 7 am. They set up a reception area for temperature screening and hand sanitizing (as a Covid precaution); a waiting and registration area; an eye screening clinic; a consultation area for doctors to write prescriptions and test reading glasses; and a retail space for sunglasses.
Shortly afterwards, the team from Khmer Sight arrived at Little Hearts, including a medical team leader, an optometrist, three nurses and two volunteers. The team brought along their medical equipment and glasses, and by 8 o’clock Little Hearts was ready for its first eye patients.
About 25 of our kids worked diligently to welcome the 130 villagers who came in over the course of the morning, helping to register them as they arrived and to perform the eye tests. At midday, everyone paused for lunch, but the testing continued throughout the afternoon. By the end of the day, 188 people had come to Little Hearts for an eye check-up. Among them, 34 were found to have cataracts and were given appointments for follow-up assessment at the Khmer Sight clinic, where they will be able to undergo cataract surgery in the near future. Most other patients either had healthy eyes or went home with prescription glasses and sunglasses, courtesy of Khmer Sight.
Little Hearts’ day as an eye clinic undoubtedly made a difference to those who attended and helped Khmer Sight Foundation achieve its mission to improve eye care in Cambodia. And who knows, maybe one of our kids was inspired to become an ophthalmologist…
