July 10th, 2005
By Bob Johnson
The Associated Press
MOSSES – Chiquetta Raby was worried about her son’s vision. She had gotten a notice from his school that 9-year-old Jalen was having trouble seeing the blackboard and might need glasses.
A single mother, Raby had no idea how she could afford an eye exam and possibly glasses, but she knew she had to do something.
“He’s an A student, and I don’t want his vision to be a problem for him in school,” Raby said this week as her soon received a vision screening at the Mount Moriah Baptist Church Christian Academy in Mosses in rural Lowndes County.
Seventeen children, mostly preschoolers, received the free screening Wednesday as part of a program to check the vision of children from low-income families. The eye exams have become part of Gov. Bob Riley’s Black Belt Action Commission, an initiative to improve the quality of life in mostly poor, rural areas of west and centralAlabama, many with majority black populations.
The vision screenings are being provided in a region that includes counties with no hospital and no emergency health care after 5p.m.
Jeff Haddox, president and founder of the nonprofit agency Sight Savers of Alabama, said children who fail the screenings are referred to his organization which works with a network of eye care professionals to provide free eye exam, glasses and other services, including surgery, if needed.
The exams themselves are performed by another nonprofit group, FocusFirst, which uses high-tech camera equipment to take pictures of the children’s eyes. Those pictures are then analyzed by Vision Care Corp., which can determine if a child is nearsighted, farsighted or has lazy eye or cataracts or other conditions.
The executive director of FocusFirst, Lucy Jones, said in the past yea volunteers, mostly college students, have screened 4,486 children and found 605, or 13.5 percent, who needed follow-up care.
“We learn through sight. If the children can’t see, they can’t learn,” said Narah Cano, executive director of the Ark of Love, a nonprofit organization that operates various programs in Lowndes County, including day care.
One of the day care teachers, 21-year-old Kimberly Grant of Mosses, said children and their parents often don’t realize that they can’t see properly.
The screening involved the lights being turned off in a room and the children putting their chins on a device that held their heads still while the photos of their eyes were taken. Some little ones, like 15-month-old Alesha Coleman, sat in a teacher’s lap while FocusFirst volunteers Josh Pane, Brandon Law and Rachel McWhorter encouraged the toddlers to look at a red light on the camera.
