Grace Vision

On 22nd of October, we celebrated the influence that our good friend and ambassador Robin Jackman had in the life of Grace Vision. We renamed our cataract surgery in his honour, and his best friend Trevor Quirk shared in this ceremony.

Since 2012 Grace Vision has been assisting the Zithulele Hospital in providing primary eye care to patients attending the health clinics serving their rural catchment population of 130000. The corona virus has stopped work. This presents an opportunity to review the results achieved. All results relate to the periods ending 31 March of the year.

Charlotte and I have been here at Zithulele with the Grace Vision programme for a few months now.

We have settled well into rural life in the Eastern Cape. We started in full flight with a busy time, in both the mobile clinic and school screenings. It also included a day of cataract surgery. I have seen many patients with severe eyecare needs.

Lwazi is a 17 year old boy, currently only in Grade 7 at a rural school near Canzibe Hospital. 17 year old boys should be either in grade 12, or already finished high school. However, Lwazi has been unable to pass any grade up to 2018, and was merely pushed up due to his age.

When Grace Vision visited the school, we discovered that Lwazi was legally blind, only able to see blurred images of what was in his field of vision. If he held something up against his nose, he could barely make out what it was.

While interacting with the communities in rural Eastern Cape where we are based, we noticed that no children in the schools were wearing spectacles. Could it be, that in rural communities sight amongst children is 20/20?

We began a programnme of sytematically visiting each of the 127 schools servicing the Zithulele community and surrounds, and to date have screened close to 10,000 schoolgoing children for visual impairment.

Only Ten Rand????…….. It cost almost half that to mail it to us !! I received a hand written envelope addressed to Grace Vision recently, with a postage stamp on it. It was from an elderly lady in the city of Durban, and contained a small note, in shaky handwriting, and a crumpled R10 note…

Thanks to our amazing team at Zithulele who have worked tirelessly throughout the year, Grace Vision has exceeded all expectations for the year 2016.

We screened more patients than any previous year, treated more eye complaints, distributed more pairs of glasses and performed more cataract surgeries.

Our Volunteer surgeons completed 18 sight restoring surgeries today!In rural Africa, the ability to see is crucial to survival. Village life is communal life, and all contribute to sustain the livelihood of the family and community. Blindness removes a critical components of the community support system, and has a downward spiralling knock-on effect.

In June 2016, sight was restored to the 1000th person blind from cataracts in the deep rural area where Grace Vision works. We thank God for His provision and enabling to change the lives of not only those who were unnecessarily blind, but also their families and close communities. Almost EVERY person who is blind…

The Grace Vision Primary Eye Care Model has been noticed by the Eastern Cape Department of Health as a well managed, and efficient programme, ideal for serving the poorest rural communities of Africa. The model has taken 4 years of experimenting and tweaking to arrive at what we have at present. Our thanks to Dr…

This week marks Mandela Day in South Africa, and in honour of Madiba, Grace Vision has scheduled 67 free sight restoring cataract surgeries for impoverished communities in rural Eastern Cape. Dr Claudine Lee from KZN has graciously volunteered her time and skills to perform most of the surgeries from Monday to Thursday, while a surgeon…