Nov 28, 2011, Yunnan: A few days ago, SKF joined up with ORBIS to invite doctors to give eye examinations to children from the SKF Hope School and local adults at Mali Village, Lancang County in Pu'er City, Yunnan Province. ORBIS is a non-profit humanitarian organisation devoted to the prevention and treatment of blindness in developing countries.
The SKF and ORBIS teams arrived to a warm welcome from the Mali villagers.
Li Xinhua, teacher of the Hope School, said: "SKF's charitable action fully expresses its concern for education in remote areas of China and the bringing up of children in those areas. It is also a way to encourage students to study hard, to be helpful in the world in the future and to help more people in need of help."
During the visit, doctors together with SKF volunteers examined the eyes of pupils and local people. These doctors are trained and developed at the SKF Paediatric Eye Care and Training Centre in Yunnan Red Cross Hospital in last 4 years. The eye examination results were available on the same day. SKF decided to follow up and support 28 pupils who needed further treatment, including surgery; further optometry and new spectacles.
SKF also brought books, footballs, badminton equipment and various stationery to the Hope School pupils and played games with them.
Yunnan Province is on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, which has strong sunshine. Undeveloped transport systems and a lack of knowledge also result in a high incidence of eye disease. To help reduce the number of people who suffer from eye disease there, SKF started to work with ORBIS in 2008 to launch a training project and set up the SKF Paediatric Ophthalmology Training Centre to improve local medical treatment.
Erik Nelander, President of SKF China, said: "Children are the future of our world as well as SKF's future, and there should be focus on the prevention of blindness from childhood. At SKF, we are working as part of a CSR initiative called SKF Care, including Business Care, Environmental Care, Employee Care and Community Care. China is certainly a very important SKF community. It is our responsibility to bring useful knowledge to those who need it. Three years ago, we began to work with ORBIS and SKF has become one of the two main company sponsors to ORBIS in China. Thanks to the trained medical personnel, more and more people are benefiting from SKF's training project. It's only a small contribution and, in the future, we will take more action following our SKF Care strategy."
The training part of the training project includes hospital-based training programmes, fellowships, paediatric ophthalmologist training, hands-on training, training other healthcare professionals, and a community health worker training programme. So far, more than 1,500 medical workers and one million patients have benefited.
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