09 August, 2004
As part of its Blindness Prevention Program, the Batey Relief Alliance (BRA) is dispatching on September 4th a team of twenty volunteer eyecare specialists and students from the University of Ohio College of Optometry?s Student Volunteers of Optometric Services to Humanity (SVOSH) to the slums (Los Mina) of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic on a seven-day eyecare mission. ?The purpose is to expand BRA?s humanitarian eyecare intervention into other impoverished urban communities where basic eyecare and eyeglasses are a rarity,? said Ulrick Gaillard, Executive Director of the BRA.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that blindness affects over forty million people around the world, and that poor vision disables 135 million more. More than ninety percent of these people live in developing countries, including the Dominican Republic. Although effective prevention and timely treatment would eliminate eighty percent of global blindness, prevention and treatment of eye problems are inaccessible to many in the developing world.
The BRA has an ongoing Blindness Prevention Program ? providing eyecare services and training, performing eye surgeries and donating eyeglasses ? though BRA?s mobile health clinic and eyecare mission trips. Services are provided to 5,000 each year with serious eye problems in the poor marginalized bateyes. The program is supported by the New Jersey Eyeglass Recycling Center in funding and donations of autorefractor, lensometer, eyeglasses and sunglasses. BRA also receives in-kind support from VOSH groups, Catholic Mission Board, Direct Relief International, Food for the Poor, Alcon Laboratories and Lions Clubs International Foundation.
The mission trip will be coordinated by BRA?s local partner and member organizations, including the BRA Dominicana, COSALUP and the Lions Club Arroyo Hondo Santo Domingo. Members of the Club will have the opportunity to serve in logistics and eyecare delivery.
The SVOSH is a non-profit organization composed of students and doctors committed to providing vision care to underdeveloped areas of the world. ?We collect donated glasses to distribute to individuals who cannot afford to purchase them,? said Julia Rae Booth, the group?s President and mission Laison. ?We will conduct free eye exams, screening for disease and providing hundreds of people with the closest possible prescription,? added Booth. In previous years, SVOSH have traveled to Venezuela, Honduras, Costa Rica, Ecuador and el Salvador to share their optometric skills to better the lives of others. In 2001, the group partnerned with BRA to provide eyecare in the bateyes of Monte Plata.
The SVOSH is scheduled from September 6th through the 10th to examine and dispense glasses to approximately 1600 needy persons ? and conduct eyecare training for BRA?s local eyecare providers and promoters.
BRA desperately needs your support to keep its Blindness Prevention going. Please make a secure only gift at DONATE NOW! and save the vision of a needy child. You may also mail your tax-deductible check payable to Batey Relief Alliance at P.O. Box 300565, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11230.
For more information about BRA and its Blindness Prevention Program, please contact Ulrick Gaillard at bra@bkreative.net or (917) 627-5026.
