Eye Health | Cataracts & the Importance of Sunglasses

Whether you live in Toronto or Vancouver, New York or London, winter has come to the Northern hemisphere! The chilly temperatures encourage us to wear our coziest hats (toques in Canada, eh), scarfs, and mittens. And while we are busy bundling our bodies to protect from freezing temperatures in the North, we often forget that harmful UV rays usually associated with the sun, are still being emitted and bouncing through our atmosphere all year round. So as you head out on your next snow adventure, be it shredding at Earl Bales or snowshoeing Mt. Seymour, please don’t forget your UV protective sunglasses!

To warm your hearts on this chilly Flashback Friday, we’d like to share another story from our last trip to Kenya with Canadian-based NGO Free the Children. Over the last few weeks, we have been sharing our experiences planning, executing and partnering with communities in South Narok, to help support vision health awareness and vision correction accessibility. We’d like to take the opportunity to thank Claudia Rojas, Optician, and all round do-gooder for her story and expert advice below. We hope you enjoy this week’s story.

Armed with excitement, glasses, vision testing charts, and bundles of emotions, our Clearly team arrived at the Kishon Medical Clinic with a mission: to make vision correction accessible to as many people as we could through eye exams and eyeglasses. However, we soon came to realize we had a second mission: to educate as many people as we could on the importance of sun protection.

We conducted vision screenings for many people who had long been waiting for us to help them see. It was extremely gratifying each time that we were able to see someone smile because they could finally see what they had been missing with a pair of corrective glasses. Among these people, many had other eye conditions such as eye infections, due to the lack of clean water and environmental factors, but, we were astonished to see the amount of young people with eye conditions due to sun damage. We noted a disproportional number of cataracts forming in many people under the age of 40, including children.

Over 75% of all blindness in Kenya is either preventable or treatable. In fact, the most common cause of both blindness and visual impairment in Kenya is cataracts, accounting for 38% of all vision loss. (You can find out more about this at http://www.iapb.org/vision-2020)

Cataracts are caused by a buildup of protein that clouds the crystalline lens inside the eye, leading to blurred vision and eventual blindness. Direct contact with sunlight for even short periods of time can lead to several long-term eye health problems – many of which begin symptom-free. Most of us think of cataracts as something that just affects older people. However, in a lot of developing countries, especially those along the equator, it is a huge problem for children as well. In most cases this is due to the amount of sun exposure they experience while being outdoors, and the lack of sun wear such as a hat or sunglasses to protect their eyes. In fact, because children spend more time outdoors, they receive approximately three times the annual adult dose of UV. The longer one is exposed to UV rays, the higher the chances of cataracts to form. 

Given our experience with the prevalence of cataracts seen at Kishon, it was imperative to share the importance of protecting young eyes from the sun, and we found the perfect opportunity during our visit to the Kisaruni Girls Secondary School. We were there to conduct vision screenings for the girls and provided those in need with corrective eyewear. It was also a great opportunity to provide them with sunglasses, and the opportunity to speak with the girls as a group about why it is important to wear the sunglasses that they now had, and if possible, a wide brim hat to protect their eyes.

There are many factors that will continue to contribute to the need for healthcare and social outreach in developing countries such as Kenya, and it all starts with the basics. One of the most important basics being education, and I am forever grateful to have been given the opportunity to share some of my knowledge with a group of amazingly bright girls, who were eager to improve the quality of their lives.

The spirit of a child belongs in a bright and colorful world, and there is no room for cataracts there.

Contributed by: Claudia Rojas, Optician