Airedale hospital's head optometrist Clare Green has helped visually-impaired Afric-an people.

Clare took 3,000 pairs of unused glasses to Zambia with the Rainbow Africa charity when she spent a month running eye clinics. She saw queues of hundreds of people prepared to wait all day for a once-in-a-lifetime chance of getting a pair of glasses. She says for many it meant they could read or sew again while for others it was a case of seeing the world for the first time.

"One of the most enjoyable clinics was in a remote village where they had built us a mud hut especially for eye testing," Clare says. "It was so small the chart had to be placed four metres outside the door."

"There were times when the massive need for eye care was overwhelming and it was distressing to have to turn away the dozens we did not manage to see," she says. "It was also frustrating when we could not give medicine or surgery, knowing treatment would be commonplace in Britain. But we know many did benefit."

She describes how a nine-year-old, now with a pair of glasses, should be able to attend an ordinary school in his hometown instead of going to a school for the blind. His mother, deeply moved, thought he would never be able to see.

Clare says she felt it a privilege to have a skill she could offer and came home feeling she had received much more than she gave.

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