An unforgettable experience is seeing the faces of girls and boys with vision problems who, for the first time, use prescription glasses. Their eyes light up, and a radiant smile appears. These extraordinary moments are experienced by the Eyes of the world teams in the school screening campaigns in Mali.
The last one took place in the Djenné district. The optometrist of the Sominé Dolo Hospital in Mopti supervised the consultations that were carried out in nine schools. Vision was checked for 2,622 students, 1,331 girls, and 1,291 boys, and 78 cases of refractive errors were detected.
The good news is that in February, in the Bankass optical workshop, created and supervised by Eyes of the world, 100 glasses were made to be donated free of charge to the students, of which 44 were graduated for the students of Djenné and the rest were given to other students in the districts of Bankass, Bandiahara, and Koro.
It should be remembered that the previous year, in 2020, despite the pandemic restrictions that kept schools closed and the numerous teacher strikes, Eyes of the world was able to organize campaigns to check the vision of more than 30,000 schoolchildren, in practically all the districts of Mopti, detecting refractive problems that could be evaluated to receive their corresponding prescription glasses.