Students plan trip to deliver eyeglasses

June 24, 2010

Students from the Ohio State University College of Optometry are preparing for a trip to Guatemala in September by going through boxes of donated eyeglasses, NBC4 reports.

The students only use single-vision glasses for the trip, but all eyeglasses that are donated are used in some form. Many of the other pairs are recycled and help fund the trip and the eye exams that will be administered as well.

The students will be bringing about 2,000 pairs of eyeglasses with them, and will conduct about 2,400 comprehensive eye exams.

"We don't just do prescriptions. We are not just handing out glasses. We actually go down there and we asses the health of people's eyes to see if we can prevent them from going blind," Patrick Milleson, president of OSU's Student Volunteers for Optometric Service to Humanity, told the news outlet.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) there are over 314 million people who are visually impaired worldwide, with 87 percent of the visually impaired living in developing countries.