The Rotary Club of Santa Barbara awarded $3,765 to Surgical Eye Expeditions International for the purchase of a Keratometer, a medical instrument used by eye care professionals to measure the curvature and reflection of the anterior surface of the cornea.
The grant supplements the $4,000 the club previously awarded to the Goleta-based nonprofit for the purchase of an Accutome A-Scan Plus biometric instrument.
SEE International recruits teams of volunteer eye surgeons, nurse and certified technicians to travel to developing countries, where they establish temporary eye clinics. The instruments are shipped to the clinics, and used to restore eyesight and correct vision problems.
The Accutome A-Scan Plus and Keratometer enable the ophthalmologic team to preoperatively diagnose the presence of astigmatism, determine the degree to which the lens has become misshaped, and the power of the inter-ocular lens (IOL) to be inserted in the eye, once the cloudy cataractous lens is removed.
Last year, SEE International volunteers completed more than 10,000 eye-restoring surgeries in more than 75 countries.
— Harry Brown is a member of the Rotary Club of Santa Barbara and the founder of SEE International.