Sri Lanka is a lush tropical island situated in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. Though the country is rich in natural beauty the population, of twenty one million, is relatively poor. The inability to afford a pair of glasses and limited access to eye care means many Sri Lankan’s suffer from avoidable blindness.
However, times are changing. An exciting new collaboration, formed to build programmes and infrastructure, will ensure that people across the country have access to affordable eye care. On February 20 2008, ICEE, the Ministry of Healthcare and Nutrition Sri Lanka, IRIS, CBM and the College of Ophthalmologists signed a Memorandum of Understanding to work together to support the implementation of a national eye care plan.
Dr Binara Amarasinghe, President of the College of Ophthalmologists recognises the importance refractive error services. He said, “One of the main areas we have identified is low vision and refractive errors and I must say in the peripheral areas there are a lot of people who need this basic spectacle correction and vision testing to get spectacles to have a better vision.”
In Sri Lanka, ICEE has delivered
