“Campus Visivo” has started, the vision prevention initiative promoted by the OneSight Foundation EssilorLuxottica Italia and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness – IAPB Italia Onlus, in collaboration with Sapienza University of Rome, which offers students Largest university in Europe the possibility of undergoing free screening eye exams and, if necessary, receiving eyeglasses also at no cost to the patients.
An original, innovative mobile clinic with a great scenographic impact – located within the university city of Rome, with access from Piazzale Aldo Moro – welcomes over 80 students a day, for an expected total of over 1600 visits during the 20 days of the initiative, which started last June 10th and will end on July 5th.
The free eye checks of the “Visual Campus” are aimed at students of the University with ISEE equal to or less than 10 thousand euros, who – independently – can book the visits online.
The project – carried out as part of a framework agreement between the Department of Sense Organs of Sapienza University, the OneSight Foundation EssilorLuxottica Italia and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness – IAPB Italia Onlus – aims to intervene in a significant on the vision problems of the university community, starting from essential visual health, offering accessible and high quality services.
With the support of the Department of Sense Organs, the program includes the daily presence (from Monday to Friday, from 9.00 to 16.30), available to students, of a team of ophthalmologists, orthoptists, opticians and dedicated staff, coordinated by Prof Alessandro Lambiase, Professor of Ophthalmology and Director of the School of Specialization in Ophthalmology at Sapienza University of Rome.
“There are over 1200 students who have booked for eye examinations carried out by the specialists of the Department of Sense Organs, who once again – explains the rector of Sapienza Antonella Polimeni – have put themselves at the service of our community to support those who have greater fragility. The collaboration with the OneSight EssilorLuxottica Italia Foundation and IAPB Italia Onlus is part of the third and fourth mission initiatives that we are undertaking to strengthen research activities, the exchange of experiences and knowledge with other bodies, but also to expand and strengthen services in favor of our community. Campus Visivo Sapienza, in guaranteeing free eye screening and optical devices, confirms itself as a real welfare tool for the student community”.
“In our experience, the protection of visual health is strongly compromised for the low-income population, without distinction in every age group. Helping vulnerable people and not falling into fragility is one of the objectives to which we pay greater attention in our projects for the prevention of eye diseases. For this reason we have decided to combine efforts to offer free eye checks and eyeglasses to the most economically vulnerable university students, in order to ensure that they have the correct ophthalmic prophylaxis in a phase of intense vision stress”. These are the words of Mario Barbuto, president of IAPB Italia Onlus. “Joining this initiative – explains Professor Lambiase – arises from the awareness that in the population groups with lower incomes, there is greater difficulty in accessing specialist visits. In students, uncorrected refractive errors, as well as stress and bad habits adopted during their studies, lead to the onset of important symptoms that negatively affect productivity and the students’ quality of life in general.”
“We are proud of this initiative with which we renew and strengthen the collaboration with Sapienza, its Department of Sense Organs and IAPB Italia Onlus, accepting the invitation of the rector Polimeni to intervene in favor of students’ sight – continues Andrea Rendina, general secretary of the OneSight EssilorLuxottica Italia Foundation. For some time, several studies have demonstrated the correlation between the years spent studying and the higher risk of myopia, also considered a risk factor for various degenerative eye diseases. Studying, being young and living in urban areas are in fact factors that favor the onset of myopia. Furthermore, the inconvenience itself of myopia is combined with the cost, additional to the already significant one that families bear for their children’s studies, consisting of eye examinations and glasses. We therefore want to make our contribution and, at least, partially reduce the phenomenon, dedicating ourselves to students from families with a particularly low ISEE income”.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
