Mayor takes on blindfold challenge
Newbury mayor is supporting World Sight Day in the Market Place today (Saturday)
NEWBURY's mayor is to learn what it's like to lose his sight today (Saturday).
Mayor Jeff Beck is to be temporarily blindfolded after taking up the gauntlet of a World Sight Day challenge.
Newbury Lions Club is to hold a special stall in the Market Place in recognition of the national day from 10am until 2pm and Mr Beck will arrive at 11.30am to take up the Lions' challenge to carry out a number of tasks while blindfolded.
Lions Club secretary Judith Colby said: “The Lions Club of Newbury is celebrating World Sight Day by raising awareness of the need for regular eye testing to reduce the amount of unnecessary blindness.”
The club has displayed posters in the town to highlight the main causes of preventable blindness and will also be placing spectacle recycling boxes in convenient locations. The Lions regularly collect, sort and recycle old spectacles to send to overseas countries.
Newbury premises and organisations which have agreed to have recycling boxes in their premises include: Newbury Town Hall, Sovereign Housing, The Diamond Tap, The Conservative Social Club, Fairclose Day Centre, and Tesco Extra.
“Please be searching out your old spectacles to drop off when you are next in town,” said Mrs Colby, pointing out the Lions were unable to recycle spectacle cases.
On a worldwide scale, an estimated 75 per cent of all blindness is found in Africa and Asia, according to the World Health Organisation who have also estimated that the number of blind people in the world could double in the next 25 years.
It claims that hundreds of thousands of people in the UK and Ireland alone are at risk of losing their sight, unaware that blindness caused by glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy is preventable with early diagnosis.
For 12 years, the Lions Eye Health programme has aimed to raise public awareness of the need for regular eye checks for early diagnosis of these two leading causes of preventable blindness. The programme also covers macular degeneration and low vision services.
