PURE Sight

At the core of PURE’s mission is identifying hurdles in a student’s path to getting an education. Unidentified vision issues could impact a child’s performance in school. Implementing vision screenings will help ensure that student visual issues are identified, thereby helping the students to succeed academically, athletically, and socially. According to LVPEI, Uncorrected refractive error is the leading cause of avoidable blindness in the developing world, wreaking havoc on individuals' educational, social, and economic well-being. If identified and treated at an early stage, this population of needless blindness can be easily helped with a simple pair of glasses.

A professional, comprehensive eye examination requires specialized equipment and can only be performed by an ophthalmologist or optometrist who has the training and education to fully evaluate a child's vision and eye health. Unfortunately, today's refractometers are cumbersome, expensive, and require infrastructure and expertise to operate. As a result, access to treatment is limited to clinical settings, where only a small fraction of people are supported. Remote areas that PURE serves do not have access to professionally conducted vision exams.

The LV Prasad Eye Institute developed a low-cost, simple-to-use device called Folding Foropter (FoFo) to address the lack of affordable tools for Refractive Error screening in low-resource areas.

The PURE Sight project is focused in rural and tribal areas in India and expanding into other developing nations PURE works in. Volunteers and teachers at schools are trained on the set up and usage of the Folding Foropter. Students needing further diagnosis are directed to professionals for further testing.

The program has reached over 250 schools and over 2000 students so far.