The Lions club of Tokai together with Jonga Trust has established a new eye care program.  The eye care program focuses on eye screening and supply of spectacles for young children under the age of six, living in disadvantaged areas of Cape Town, South Africa.

The program identifies the young children who are in need of eye care such as refractive error or eye pathology. The program ensures the children are refracted by qualified Optometrists, trained in paediatric care and supply the appropriate prescription spectacles.  In cases where eye pathology is present, the children are referred for specialist paediatric care to the Red Cross Children’s Hospital Eye Unit. At the same time, eye health education on the importance of caring for their eyes, is given in their home language.

To date 1050 children have been screened and of these a 125 children was refracted by Optometrists and given spectacles by Jonga Trust.  Another 7 of these children was diagnosed with eye pathology and was referred to the Red Cross Children’s Hospital eye unit for specialist eye care.

Jonga Trust in association with the Lions club of Bergvliet had an eye health screening day for the preschool children at the Philippi children’s centre on 25 October 2011. Jonga Trust screened two classes, the Grade R and the Nursery class (4-5year old). “The two Jonga Trust eye screeners, Eubertina and Gavin, were fantastic with the children”, remarked Rose Saville, president of the Bergvliet Lion club.

Fifty children in total were screened for visual problems where each child was checked for squints, retinal disease and visual acuity.

On the day no child required glasses, but one little girl in Grade R was diagnosed wit congenital cataracts. The staff members of Phillipi Children's Centre was also screened and one person was referred by Di Powell to an eye clinic for further eye treatment.

Jonga Trust in association with Rotary Club of Durbanville (D9350) launched a two month project to screen, test and provided spectacles for over a 1000 of local Durbanville Farm school children.

The project saw 46 children receiving new spectacles to aid them with their sight in the glass room and one child was diagnosed with congenital cataracts.  Jonga Trust made special arrangements for the child to be seen by Dr R Grotte, a pediatrics Ophthalmologist at Red Cross Children's Hospital.  The cataracts were removed 3 weeks later and Jonga made up a special pair of bifocal spectacles for the child to see clearly at distance and near.

The Rotary Club of Durbanville was invaluable in their support of the Durbanville Farm School Screening project and got a well deserved mention in the February edition of the International Rotary newsletter.