Evan Brown triaging Max Nyenkamp who went on to win a gold medal in basketball

1200 Special Olympic athletes assembled in Wellington from 26 November to 1 December 2017 to compete in their respective sports at the National Summer Games (NSG). Since 2001, the New Zealand Opening Eyes programme has screened athletes to assess vision problems. Local wholesalers Optimed, OIC and Designs for Vision generously donated equipment and expertise to enable a volunteer team of 22 optometrists, 17 student optometrists, one dispensing optician and two Essilor staffers to screen and support more than 800 athletes at the ASB Sports Centre in Kilbirnie, Wellington.

Keratoconus is significantly more common in individuals living with Downs Syndrome and can be more complicated to treat and manage. This year also saw the introduction of a specialist team from the University of Auckland, comprising Akilesh Gokul, Samantha Simkin and Joyce Mathan, who using a corneal topographer, auto-refractor and biomicrosope screened all Downs syndrome athletes, detecting keratoconus or sub-clinical keratoconus in 45 athletes. Many athletes with keratoconus presented with asymmetry of disease, having quite advanced progression in one eye and mild or sub-clinical status in the other eye. We are hopeful corneal cross linking will be very helpful for future management of these athletes.

Cataract, pterygium and blepharitis are other conditions seen with high frequency in Special Olympic athletes and this year, another 30 athletes were referred to ophthalmology, their GP or optometry for further investigation.

The Special Olympics Lions Club International Opening Eyes (SOLCIOE) programme is designed to provide quality eye care for people with intellectual disabilities, increasing the athlete's access to care by providing vision screening, refraction and dispensing of appropriate eyewear during Special Olympics events. From previous SOLCIOE screenings it’s known that about one third of Special Olympic athletes present wearing clinically incorrect eyewear or not wearing eyewear at all. This statistic was born out yet again at the NZ National Games, with the programme dispensing 360 pairs of prescription eyewear, confirming how this vision programme continues to fill an unmet healthcare need for those individuals with intellectual disabilities in our community. The programme also educates athletes, their guardians, coaches and administrators about the importance of vision to the athletes’ performance in sports, school, craft and work and provides continuing education to our volunteer optometrists to familiarise them with the best techniques for testing this patient population.

We would like to thank all the sponsors and volunteers who helped support this year’s programme and also recognise SOLCIOE’s global sponsors: the Essilor Vision Foundation which provided the athletes’ lenses; Safilo Group which provided the frames and free plano sunglasses for those who passed the screening; and Liberty Optical which supplied the sports frames and protective eyewear.

The Special Olympics brings out the best people, and the best in people! We had a great time and everyone was positive and enthusiastic. The team worked hard, but received the emotional reward of a job well done. We hope to see you all again at the next SOLCIOE NZ event in 2021.

Akilesh Gokul with Max at the topographer