JOHNSON & JOHNSON VISION CARE

HEALTH/SOCIAL                

JOHNSON & JOHNSON VISION CARE ANNOUNCES VISION SCREENING PROGRAM

SEES 6 MILLION INDIAN CHILDREN IN 10 YEARS

16 million children screened throughout Asia

Mumbai, October 11, 2012– Johnson & Johnson Vision Care (JJVC) today announced that more than 6 million children in India have received free vision screening through Sight for Kids, a partnership program with the Lions Clubs International Foundation (LCIF) now marking its 10th anniversary.  The announcement was made on the occasion of World Sight Day, celebrated each year on October 11.

Overall, the program has screened 16 million children across India, China, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. It was established in 2002 to reduce visual impairment and disability in Asia through volunteer-directed vision screenings involving ministries of health, school districts, eye care professionals and hospitals along with Lions Clubs International volunteers and JJVC employees.

In India, the main areas of focus for screening children have been in Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Cochin. Across Mumbai Sight for Kids has reached out to 1,566 schools and screened 382,909 children ages 5-15.

Sight For Kids has provided a total of 59,000 pairs of glasses to children across India as well as taken care of treatment of 200,000 kids who were referred to eye specialists of which 42,000 were treated for eye conditions. 

Mr. Sunil Kumar, Director, The International Association of Lions Clubs, from Secunderabad said, “It is hard to believe that 12.8 million children are visually impaired in South-East Asia among the 153 million worldwide. To prevent irreversible blindness is to catch them young. There can’t be a better gift to children than the “Gift of Sight” for them to see the beauty of colors. Thanks to the incredible success of the Sight For Kids program from LCIF and Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, 16 million kids in Asia are now safe with more to go.”

“We are proud to support an initiative that continues to identify Indian children with vision-related issues and refers them for remedial care,” said Vivek Bhatnagar, General Manager of Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, India. “A simple act of a vision screening that takes minutes can create a lifelong change.”

In its first year Sight For Kids screened more than half a million children. Today, at 16 million children, it is equivalent to screening the entire population of London twice.[i]

To date:

·         Nearly 600,000 children have been referred to physicians for further evaluation;

·         More than 163,000 children have received glasses; and

·         More than 76,000 children have been treated for various eye conditions.[ii]

An estimated 1.4 million children in the world are blind, and three-quarters of them live in the poorest regions of Asia and Africa, most lacking access to treatment for easily-treatable conditions.[iii]^,[iv] Globally, uncorrected refractive errors (nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism) are the main cause of visual impairment in children and may result in lost education and employment opportunities, lower productivity, and impaired quality of life.[v]  

Sight for Kids is one of the longest running and largest international school vision-screening programs that continue to operate as a public-private initiative across multiple countries, including developing countries.  The program has trained more than 110,000 Lions school teachers, and other volunteers to assist with vision screening and provide eye health education at 26,000 schools. 

About Johnson & Johnson Vision Care

Johnson & Johnson Vision Care is the world’s leading manufacturer of disposable contact lenses.  Anchored by its mission to bring healthy vision to everyone, everywhere, every day, the Company has set industry standards through innovative technologies and products.  Its best-selling ACUVUE® Brand Contact Lenses launched as the world’s first disposable soft contact lens in 1987, and since then the brand has introduced numerous first-to-market products. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, USA, Johnson & Johnson Vision Care has some 3,400 employees at offices and state-of-the-art research and manufacturing facilities throughout the world where it manufactures 2 billion contact lenses a year. The Company provides professional instruction through The Vision Care Institute™, a renowned program taught in 27 languages in 40 markets worldwide. 

 

About Lions Clubs International Foundation

Lions Clubs International Foundation (LCIF) is the charitable arm of Lions Clubs International, the world’s largest service club organization with more than 1.35 million members in 207 countries and geographical areas around the world. Established in 1968, LCIF has been preventing avoidable blindness on a global scale for more than 20 years through the SightFirst program. Lions are investing US$415 million in SightFirst and have restored sight to 30 million people worldwide. Learn more at www.lcif.org.