The Volunteer Ophthalmic Services Overseas (VOSO) eye health aid group is adding low vision to its list of aid services from this year and is urgently seeking donations of low vision equipment to distribute in the Pacific Islands to low vision patients.
Auckland-based low vision consultant and optometrist Naomi Meltzer has volunteered her services to VOSO and, in collaboration with the Blind Foundation, will provide low vision aids such as magnifiers, high plus spectacles and sunglasses and other small low vision aids, which are currently being collected by Blind Foundations centres throughout New Zealand.
VOSO is a New Zealand charitable trust that provides free eye care to the people of the Pacific. This completely voluntary-based organisation was established 30 years ago and visits Fiji, Samoa and Tonga on an annual basis to help restore vision through sight-saving cataract surgery and refractive services, including supplying thousands of pairs of glasses each year.
Two-thirds of the world's population with low vision resides in the Asia-Pacific region1. Providing low vision aids is important for improving patient quality of life, however there are many issues and challenges for the provision of low vision aids in the pacific, said Meltzer.
“There is huge difficulty getting low vision services in many third world countries. New Zealand has a lot more resources than our Pacific Island neighbours and so there are many magnifiers and low vision aids, which are no longer required, sitting in the backs of drawers in homes around the country.”
