Clare can see the good in her work

from the Scotsman

By JOANNA VALLEY
Meet the Edinburgh optometrist who helps transform the sight – and the lives – of people in Africa.

THE barefoot Ethiopian woman had queued all morning to have her blind two-year-old son seen by the white "miracle workers".

Desperate for help, she had walked three hours from her village carrying the youngster to the temporary eye clinic, but as Edinburgh optometrist Clare Downes looked into the tiny child's white pupils she realised she was going to have to break bad news.

The youngster had cataracts, which had turned the lens behind his pupils white. There was nothing the Vision Aid Overseas team could do for him.

If he had been born in the UK, his cataracts would have been removed in a routine operation at birth, but such treatment was an unaffordable luxury for his family.

Clare, who transformed lives by delivering thousands of spectacles donated in the Capital, says: "It was very upsetting.

"She was devastated. She'd thought we could solve her problems because they think as white people you are some kind of miracle workers."

Vision Aid Overseas sent Clare, 29, as part of a team of six opticians to test eyes and prescribe glasses in Ethiopian villages.

This year's trip was her second to the impoverished country, following a similar visit in 2006. She and her colleagues at opticians RC Cunning in Penicuik and Bruntsfield spent months collecting glasses from customers.

In two weeks in Africa, her team examined 2041 patients and dispensed 1643 pairs of glasses.

What they were offering was something that is simply out of reach for most Ethiopians.

Stephen Thompson, spokesman for Vision Aid Overseas, says the population is one of the worst afflicted in the world in terms of blindness and poor sight.

"In Ethiopia, of a population of 78 million, eight to ten million are thought to have visual impairment needing glasses and half of those are children," he says.

"Blindness and even refractive error, or the need for spectacles, is intrinsically linked to poverty, poor hygiene and diet.

"In the UK we have several opticians on each high street but in countries like Ethiopia they don't have any, and in the developing world an average person would need to spend eight to ten months salary to buy a pair of glasses."

Testing around 40 people each day, Clare encountered many people with problems worse than those she usually treated in Scotland. Among the most serious was trachoma – a disease carried by flies – while other conditions were caused by unrelenting exposure to the sun, and simple malnutrition.

Around 300 million people in the world have sight so poor they cannot perform everyday tasks, but 60 per cent of them could have their problems solved with glasses, says Clare.

Though there were some people the team were unable to help, like the baby with cataracts, other success stories spurred them on.

One of those was a seven-year-old Dejeuner who'd had to give up school because his eyesight was too poor to see the blackboard.

"We had to give him big old women's glasses," recalls Clare, "They were very thick and we gave him a ski band to hold them on. But I asked the man in the lab if there was any way he could cut the lenses to fit another frame."

Minutes later the youngster was sporting a new pair of specs and what the volunteers call "The Vision Aid smile" – the broad grin of someone who has just seen after years in the dark.

"He was so happy," says Clare. "The glasses were huge and falling off but he was over the moon because he'd never seen before. I had a big lump in my throat."

Clare, who lives in Edinburgh's West End, was inspired to be a Vision Aid Overseas volunteer when the charity gave a talk at Glasgow Caledonian University when she was studying optometry. However, the sheer volume of patients the opticians are expected to test on their overseas trips meant she had to wait until she was very experienced before she could offer help.

"It was the most amazing thing I've ever done," enthuses Clare, who asked for donations for her second Vision Aid trip instead of wedding presents when she married fund manager Charles, 32, last July.

One of the most rewarding moments was witnessing people's awe at getting glasses for the first time and the difference they made to their lives – though it sometimes took a while to sink in.

"Sometimes they went out and said the glasses were too strong because the difference is too scary for them. Their world goes from very hazy to too clear," she said.

In the villages Clare visited, under two hours from the capital Addis Ababa, families lived in one-room circular huts, without water or electricity and often with their animals crammed in.

Most had never had their eyes tested, so when the travelling clinic opened each day at 8am, there'd be long lines waiting.

Because they didn't speak English, patients used the "Illiterate E test", looking at a series of letter Es and showing with their hands the way they were facing.

"Most couldn't get beyond the first (largest) letter of the chart," says Clare. "We took out 5000 pairs of glasses yet by the end we ran out of certain prescriptions, but they had never had glasses so seeing anything was a huge improvement."

One patient who made a big impact on Clare was a 21-year-old student, suffering from extremely poor sight due to malnutrition. "He was studying engineering at college and his degenerative condition had become apparent in the first year of his studies," she says.

"Though he was devastated his sight was going to get worse he was happier with a pair of reading glasses and we gave him a pair of sunglasses.

"In cases where we couldn't help we often gave them sunglasses to make them feel better as they are quite a fashion statement.

Since her return, Clare has been able to show some of those who donated glasses what a difference their small gesture had made.

She says: "A lot of people just throw their old glasses out but a pair of glasses can be life-changing for someone in Ethiopia."

Jonathan Sherman, 34, an accounting manager from Dock Street, Leith, donated his old glasses. "We all know from the 80s how bad Ethiopia was," he says.

"It's a really good cause and a great thing Clare does to donate her time."

Looking at her picture album, including a snap of an Ethiopian youngster wearing glasses like his, he adds: "It feels very good to be able to help people that really need it."

THE GIFT OF SIGHT

VISION Aid Overseas is a UK charity dedicated to helping people in the developing world whose lives are blighted by poor eye sight, particularly in those cases where spectacles can help.

Since it started in 1985, VAO has provided 600,000 eye tests and given 300,000 people the ability to see with a pair of glasses.

The charity sends around 240 qualified opticians abroad each year as volunteers to work in developing countries.