Cambridge Lions Learn About Recyling Eyeglasses

Donating your old eyeglasses may help other people improve their vision. The Cambridge Lions Club collects used eyeglasses and sends them to Columbus for recycling. Optometry students at The Ohio State University sort the eyeglasses.  (Photo right:  Lion Tom Davey with Lagedyk, Braun, and Huston)

Three OSU optometry students visited the Lions Club to explain how used eyeglasses are used to help those who otherwise might not be able to improve their vision. “We will take lenses, frames, and hard eyeglass cases,” said Amanda Huston. “Even damaged frames can be recycled for their metal content.”

"We are members of SVOSH (Student Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity),” Huston said. “Beth (Braun), Nikki (Lagendyk), and I will be going on a mission trip to serve those who otherwise may not have access to eye care. Last summer OSU students went to Peru.”

“We have a machine at Ohio State that lets us analyze the prescriptions of donated eyeglasses,” Huston said. “We label them and put them in boxes. The students on the mission trip took them along and gave them to people who needed them.”

“Last year the students saw two thousand two hundred patients in four days,” said Lagendyk. “In the area where they went forty-four percent of the people live below the poverty level. Ninety-three percent are illiterate. There is only one doctor for every twelve thousand people.”

“The local Lions Club in Lima, Peru, set up the site, informed the people and provided transportation,” Lagendyk said. “They also made arrangements for places for our students to stay and served as interpreters.”

“The students set up almost an assembly line process to be able to see all of the people in the four days,” said Braun. “One student would do the eye exam; another would put drops in the patients’ eyes to dilate them. Another would use the retina scope to see if there were any peripheral damage to the eyes or if there were problems with detached retinas.”

“The results of the eye exams would tell the students what recycled eyeglasses to dispense or what medications to give. If they didn’t have the exact prescription on hand they would give out glasses with the closest match.”

“They also gave sunglasses to all of the people,” Braun said. “A lot of the vision problems come from overexposure to the sun.”

“They did not have an ophthalmologist with them so they made lists of people who may need operations on their eyes for later follow-up visits.”

“World-wide there are between four and four and a half million people who are functionally blind,” said Huston. “The number one reason is cataracts. Here in the U.S. we have no problem getting cataract surgery. In other countries people are not so fortunate.”

“Age related problems from diabetes and macular degeneration are the second leading cause of blindness.”

“Glaucoma is third. It is treatable with medication. It needs long term treatment. This is a problem where medical care is limited.”

VOSH International is a non-sectarian, non-governmental organization dedicated to the elimination of preventable blindness by the year 2020. VOSH provides eye care and vision services for those below the poverty level who have limited access to vision care.

Each year VOSH chapters set up eighty to ninety missions serving over one hundred thousand people. There are thirty-five regional chapters and twenty-five student chapters in the U.S., Canada, India, Africa, Central and South America, and the Netherlands.

For more information about VOSH visit the web site at http://www.vosh.org. For information about the OSU College of Optometry visit http://optometry.osu.edu.