Eye Heroes Beginnings

Sight loss that could have been prevented is a large and growing problem in the UK. Currently, there are two million people with sight loss in this country, and one million of these could be living with better eyesight if they had been treated earlier. In addition, the number of people in the UK with sight loss is predicted to double by 2050. An effective strategy to raise awareness about eye health and promote the early detection of treatable eye diseases is thus urgently needed. 

Eye Heroes was founded with exactly this strategy in mind. In 2016 its founders, Manjul Rathee and Dr Yusrah Shweikh, hit upon the idea of fighting avoidable blindness by educating children to spread the message of the importance of eye health within their own communities. The non-profit organisation is the first of its kind in the UK, and thanks to its unique approach, Eye Heroes has grown enormously since its founding.

Manjul and Yusrah were inspired to start the campaign through Yusrah’s experience as an ophthalmologist, encountering throughout her career patients who would lose their sight, which with earlier diagnosis could have been prevented. Yusrah specialises in glaucoma, an eye disease that causes progressive optic nerve damage, but which is often asymptomatic until late in the disease. Unfortunately there is no way to recover nerve tissue once it is damaged, which is why eye checks by opticians are so important for early detection of glaucoma.

Yusrah was saddened by one particular patient, a professional in her early 40s, whose glaucoma was already severe when it was diagnosed so she was losing her sight from preventable causes. Another distressing case was a girl in her early teens with an uncorrected glasses prescription. This meant that her visual pathways had not developed normally, causing loss of vision that was by then irreversible, although correctly prescribed glasses before the age of around seven could have prevented this. 

Yusrah confided in Manjul – a personal friend – about such cases, where people were losing their vision needlessly. Manjul, a health tech entrepreneur and human-centered service designer, felt equally strongly that something needed to be done. With Yusrah and Manjul’s complementary skills in healthcare and design, they decided they wanted to create a solution to address avoidable sight loss. This led to the birth of Eye Heroes, and the rolling out of the Eye Heroes programme empowering children to become eye health ambassadors in their own communities. 

Today, the main factor that it is causing preventable sight loss is still a lack of awareness of the importance of regular eye checkups. Sadly, there are still many cases like the two patients that inspired the birth of Eye Heroes. “It’s criminal that people lose vision when we have optometrists on every high street”, says Yusrah. 

But thanks to Yusrah and Manjul, we now have Eye Heroes, which is dedicated to contributing to lowering the sight loss statistics through its unique child-centred approach. 

~ Daisy West