In 1990 Lions Clubs International Foundation (LCIF) launched Lions SightFirst , a major international program to combat avoidable blindness.
Since that time SightFirst has:
- Prevented serious vision loss for 27 million
- Provided 80.5 million treatments for river blindness
- Awarded US$202 million for 841 projects in 90 countries
- Restored sight to 7.1 million with cataract
- Improved eye-care services for hundreds of millions
- Built or expanded 213 eye hospitals, clinics and wards
- Upgraded 325 eye centres with equipment
- Trained 305,000 ophthalmologists, ophthalmic nurses, other professional eye-care workers and village health workers
Typical SightFirst projects focus on building eye care infrastructure and delivery systems, training of eye care workers and mounting large-scale treatment programs to tackle major blinding diseases.
One of SightFirst's major eye health education initiatives has been the Lions Eye Health Program (LEHP), established in the US in the early 1990s based on the National Eye Health Education Program.
The Lions Eye Health Program was launched in Australia as a pilot project in 2000. This initial trial, funded by LCIF as a SightFirst project was conducted in District 201V2 where it proved highly successful. More than two thirds of all clubs participated in the first twelve months.
With further significant funding from SightFirst, the program was extended nationally in 2001. Since that time more than 40% of all Lions Clubs in Australia have undertaken some type of LEHP promotion and many thousands of people have heard the central messages that three quarters of vision impairment is either preventable or treatable with early detection; and all those over fifty years of age should have a comprehensive eye examination at least every two years.
In May 2006 the MD National Convention endorsed a proposal for the Lions Eye Health Program - Australia to become a Mutiple District Category B Project. This endorsement recognised the impact that LEHP has made in informing the community of the ways in which the irreversible damage of some common eye diseases can be prevented; and allowed us to work with Lions across Australia to spread the LEHP message.
CERA provides the professional eye-care expertise and research base on which the LEHP messages are founded thus providing scientific credibility to the program.
With support from Diabetes Australia and Glaucoma Australia handout literature, training manuals and information videos have been developed. These are the core components of the program.
