Orange foundation and Armenian eye care project have launched “take a selfie and help a child to fight blindness” online campaign

YEREVAN, October 1, /ARKA/. “Take a selfie and help a child to fight blindness” online campaign, a new joint initiative of the Orange Foundation and the Armenian Eye Care Project (AECP), was launched on September 30. 

The campaign is implemented on the occasion of the World Sight Day (WSD) 2014 and is aimed at treating sight issues of children and preventing blindness through provision of screenings and distribution of eye glasses to those who need one. 

Starting from September 30, till the 9th of October, every selfie sent to Orange Armenia Facebook page and published there will result into a pair of free eye glasses to one child from the Armavir region. The AECP medical groups will perform the eye screenings followed with the preparation of the eye glasses in the quantity of published selfies.

“Helping children and people with visual disabilities is one of the pillar activities implemented by Orange Foundation. This online campaign, launched with our partner Armenian Eye Care Project, provides each and every one with a concrete possibility to help children with visual disabilities, just with an expression of a good will. 80% of blindness worldwide is avoidable if the issues are addressed at an early stage. Taking a selfie is easy, fast and free of charge, thus I encourage everyone to participate to this campaign and contribute to the very important goal of prevention of blindness” said Francis Gelibter, the Chairman of Board of the Orange Foundation.

“AECP attaches special importance to the celebration of the World Sight Day (WSD) in Armenia and has been successful, together with its partners, to attract the attention of the society on problems that have people with eye diseases. The WSD celebration is a great opportunity to emphasize the importance of the prevention of blindness, both for children and adults. 

The World Health Organization is calling on all relevant organizations to join the Global Action Plan targeting to reduce avoidable blindness by 25%, by 2019. So we want to invite everyone to join and become a part of this global initiative by simply doing what people do every day just for fun - “to take a selfie!” said Nune Yeghiazaryan, Country Director of the Armenian Eye Care Project.

According to WHO statistics, 285 million people around the world are blind or visually impaired, 4 out of 5 of this cases are avoidable, poorer populations are more affected by blindness and visual impairment - 90% of the world’s visually impaired are living in developing countries. The common causes of visual impairment mainly are: 42% from refractive errors or need for spectacles, 33% cataract, 25% other causes.  

The Armenian EyeCare project marks the World Sight Day with a series of events. In line with this year’s slogan, “No more of avoidable blindness”, in cooperation with Orange Foundation the launch of Mobile Eye Hospital (MEH) activities in the Armavir region and eye screening in the Armavir schools is planned  for the 9th of October, as well as  implementation of a project aimed at provision of eye screening to premature infants, implemented in cooperation with the USAID, is envisaged. 

The cooperation between Orange Foundation and Armenian Eye Care Project started in 2011, in the frame of Mobile Eye Hospital project, aimed at provision of quality eye care service to the inhabitants of rural areas. Since then in the scope of the project more than 66000 people (54000 adults and 12000 children) have received eye screenings, 5044 operations and laser treatments have been performed and 23,631 eye glasses distributed. -0-