Willing Hearts, Shining Eyes
Can you believe that one man single-handedly manages the cooking of almost 5,000 meals a day, which are then distributed all over the country to needy Singaporeans?
His name is Tony Tan, and since 2005, his Willing Hearts organisation has served 90,000+ meals a month and other support services to the underprivileged and marginalised members of society. Now, in the soup kitchen's new premises in Eunos, Tony is opening up a medical hub providing basic and important health services to all who can't afford these on their own, with clinics for dentistry, traditional Chinese medicine and yes... primary eye care!
We are so honoured to be running the eye care department of Willing Hearts' medical hub, and proud of our fantastic team of optometrists and opticians who give their time to help us help others. Not only will we provide vision tests (visual acuity and subjective refraction) and eye examinations where necessary, we'll also donate glasses for those who require them. We kicked off our contributions on October 17 with seven patients who urgently needed their eyes checked.
And none too soon! Optometrist Shawn Loh detected a congenital ptosis (drooping eyelid) on this nine-year-old patient, whose school sent her to us because she had extreme difficulty seeing in school. After several tests, Shawn diagnosed amblyopia (lazy eye) in both eyes, a rare condition, caused by extremely high dioptre ("high degree," in Singaporean layman terms) and high astigmatism. She has been referred to the Singapore National Eyecare Centre to be treated with visual therapy to improve her visual acuity. We are hoping very hard that this will work as she has already passed the critical age of seven. Another reason why it's imperative for kids to go for eye examinations every year.
We're continuing to ramp up our eye care community service operations at Willing Hearts, and whole-heartedly thank Tony for letting us be a part of his very deserving organisation. And thanks to all of you for supporting us, which in turn allows us to give back to the community. Stay tuned for more news and if you'd like to find out how you can help, please contact Desiree Koh at desireekoh@thelensmen.com.