Eye Health Care
Eye health is a major problem in Ashanti, where young children who go blind have a life expectancy of under a year. We’ve built a two-storey clinic to tackle this problem. It was designed for us by Architects for Humanity, who based the plans on traditional Ashanti building designs with added features to combat heat and promote air circulation. The unskilled building work was carried out free of charge by local villagers, often with over two hundred villagers working on site at any one time.
We are extremely grateful to Architects for Humanity and also to our patron, Dame Mary Perkins of Specsavers, who personally provided much of the finance.
The clinic, which includes a pharmacy, is not yet registered. It is currently used by Dr Peter Osei-Bonsu and other medical staff from Komfo Anokye Hospital in Kumasi, who have so far performed around 150 cataract operations there; and by groups of SpecSavers opticians, who visit every year and have now distributed 6,500 pairs of secondhand prescription spectacles.
We envisage the clinic will be expanded over time, and will work under the umbrella of Vision 20/20 to cater for a large catchment area, since there is no other eyehealth provision in the area.
