This World Sight Day, Vision Executives are undergoing a fundraising event for three vision loss charities. One of these charities is Andean Medical Mission, who recognise the extreme poverty and lack of eye health care in Bolivia.

Our gruelling Yorkshire Three Peaks challenge will pale in comparison to the travelling Andean Medical Mission do, sometimes for 3-4 days, to reach the incredibly remote Andean villages they intend to administer treatment in.

Training up Bolivian doctors, using the funds we intend to raise, will make treatment in these villages easier. Dave Goldsmith explained that currently “there are 15 ophthalmologists per million population”. Andean Medical Mission intend to bring a focus to this lack of eye health care in such a poverty-stricken country.

To find out more about the charities we hope to raise money for this World Sight Day, please read our article and consider donating via our JustGiving page.

Mojo Vision have announced their progress on a tiny AR display they are embedding in their contact lenses. This will provide a digital layer of information that will be superimposed on what you’ll really see.

 Globally, 2.2 billion people live with some form of vision impairment – 1 billion of these could be prevented. World Sight Day, which was first held in 2000 as part of the Lions Club International Foundation’s campaign SightFirst, was created with the aim to focus global attention on blindness and vision impairment.
 
Vision Executives was founded with the intention of becoming one of the world’s leading eyecare recruitment providers. One of founding principles is to ‘provide more than just recruitment services and contribute positively to the community which makes this industry great’.  That is why this World Sight Day, 14th October, we are undertaking the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge in our ‘Walk for World Sight Day’ event. This challenge involves walking 24 miles up three mountains, with an ascent of 5200ft, in under 12 hours. We intend to donate the money to worthy #eyecare charities, but there are so many, we struggled to choose! Cue my LinkedIn network of over 5000 eyecare professionals. I asked them for suggestions and I received an incredible number of recommendations.

We would like to thank everyone who nominated a charity, we considered every one of them. As there were so many, we wanted created a shortlist of a few smaller organisations to raise money for but also awareness of their tireless work to improve vision around the world.

3 charities in particular stood out to us: Andean Medical Mission nominated by Martin Rescorle, Himalayan Cataract Project nominated by Koray Alpaslan and Sight For All nominated by Shane Hage.

If you would like to donate to our Walk for World Sight Day event and the charities we are raising money for please visit our JustGiving page.

We reached out to all of these charities to find out how they are tackling the problem of global vision loss. I also spoke to Nick Parker, from the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) to understand the global strategy in the fight against preventable blindness.

 Aurion Biotech have announced their preliminary findings from its IOTA trail which was conducted in November 2020 and May 2021. 50 patients who have been diagnosed with corneal endothelial disease were treated with a transformational cell therapy procedure which were developed by Professor Shigeru Kinoshita and colleagues at Kyoto Prefecture University of Medicine.

The trail is the first corneal endothelial cell therapy procedure to be performed successfully outside of Japan. “This is a landmark moment for the treatment of corneal endothelial disease” Dr Edward J. Holland, Chief Medical Advisor at Aurion Biotech.

In their first trial, 16 patients were treated from a single donor, whilst in the second trial, 34 patients were treated from a single donor. The procedure is minimally invasive for patients and accessible for surgeons.

“The IOTA trial has given us invaluable clinical insights and confirms that this procedure can restore vision to patients suffering from blindness resulting from corneal endothelial disease” Greg Kunst, CEO Aurion Biotech.

Patients will be monitored overtime in order to assess the safety and efficacy of the cell treatment therapy.

Ref: https://eyewire.news/articles/aurion-biotech-announces-iota-cell-therapy-trial/

A message from our Managing Director:
 
Last week I received a mystery package from my mum, who’s living in Australia and who I haven’t seen in well over a year due to the pandemic. When I opened it up, I was presented with the canvas in the image below. ‘What a lovely gift’ was my first thought, but as I mounted it on the wall in my office, I realised there was much deeper meaning behind it.

Firstly, the image is one I took on a residential trip during my first year of university. It is from the top of Pen-y-ghent, one of the Yorkshire three peaks. Looking back at this trip, I realise how lucky I was to be at university at all.

As a teenager, my heart was set on playing professional rugby, until two knee reconstructions (or a lack of talent) prevented me from securing a first team contract. Following this disappointment, I chose to attend university. My degree was paramount in in my getting my fist interview with a recruitment company and ultimately landed me the career I’m in today. Unfortunately, I didn’t get that job, but unluckily for that company I was hired by a much larger international recruitment agency and won an award for being the top newcomer. This success didn’t come easily. It took a year, and endless hours of failure and learning to achieve it.

It was that international #recruitment agency who first introduced me to the ophthalmology industry. A few years on and I am now running my own recruitment company Vision Executives. I was only able to start this company because my dad, and business partner, loaned me the money to start up. Perhaps he identified a bit of potential in me, particularly after the abysmal year 2020 had been for the recruitment industry.

As the first quarter of my business comes to a close, I can look back at how fantastic it has been and at some of the great candidates I have helped secure exciting new jobs for. Perhaps, like me, their potential would have been overlooked had Vision Executives not been there to help them.

Eventually everything comes full circle. I am currently planning which eyecare charity Vision Executives are going to raise money for this #WorldSightDay, coincidentally by climbing the three peaks which, of course, includes Pen-y-ghent, the mountain from the canvas. It is strange how everything works out in the end, but I think my mum may have just come up with our new company slogan: ‘Vision is the ability to see potential in what others overlook’.

World Site Day 2021 is less than 100 days away and Vision Executives want to raise money and awareness for eye care related charities. As such, WE WANT YOU to nominate your favourite eye care charities to feature in our upcoming article highlighting some of the great work done by these charities to support people suffering visual impairments around the world. In addition to this we are aiming to raise over £1000 for one of these charities by undertaking a gruelling physical event this World Sight Day (14th October).
 
PLEASE NOMINATE YOUR FAVOURITE EYECARE CHARITY ON OUR LINKED IN

While you’re here we also wanted to share the #LoveYourEyes from the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB). “Almost everyone on the planet will experience an eye health issue in their lifetime, yet more than a billion people worldwide do not have access to eye care services,” Peter Holland, CEO of IAPB. In September IAPB aim to get over 1 million people to pledge to get an eye test. Whilst the lack of eye care services is a global issue, getting people who have access to an eye test to book one is an excellent start.