StemCell Therapy

The website PreventBlindness.org, an organization committed to education around blindness and "bringing Americans to eye care," has published a handy guide to safely viewing a solar eclipse and what it can potentially do to your eyes if they aren't shielded by the proper protection. As PreventBlindness.org explains, looking at a solar eclipse too long can cause "solar retinopathy," or retinal burns that destroy the cells that help you see. Unfortunately, the damage occurs with no pain, due to the fact that there are no nerve endings in that part of your eyes, and it can take "a few hours to a few days after viewing the solar eclipse to realize the damage that has occurred."

All of which sounds absolutely terrifying, an information cocktail that seems like a surefire rocket fuel to the planet Hypochondria. Still, you can never be too careful, especially if you're already experiencing discomfort in the eyes. These are the specific symptoms PreventBlindness.org stipulates that you should look out for:

See the article here:
Here Are the Eye Damage Symptoms to Worry About After Watching the Eclipse - Thrillist

Watch CBN News' Lorie Johnson and Mark Martin's interview on viewing the eclipse safely to see the type of glasses to get or creating your own "projector."

Looking at the solar eclipse without properly protecting your eyes can cause permanent eye damage and other issues. The only exception is during the brief one to three minutes of totality, when the moon completely covers the sun.

The sun can damage the retina, which is in the back of the eye, and contains light sensors that allow us to see.The amount of damage our retina sustain depends on how long we look at the sun and where the sun is in the sky. It's less intense close to the horizon, most insense directly overhead.

Our retina can handle indirect light from the sun just fine. However, since the sun's light is so intense, looking directly at it can literally burn our retina. This is true regardless of whether there is an eclipse. The difference is, on most days we instinctively avert our eyes when looking directly at the sun. It's a reflex because it's uncomfortable. However, during an eclipse, many people forego the discomfort of staring directly at the sun for the thrill of the witnessing an eclipse.

People tend to rationalize that since the moon is covering some, or most, of the sun, it's safe to view directly with the naked eye. Not so, say eye doctors who treated burned retinas in the shape of crescents after the 1979 solar eclipse.

Usually retina damage isn't noticed until the next morning. A person might look in the mirror and have difficulty making out their facial features, or attempt to read the newspaper without being able to read the words. Doctors say about half of the people with burned retinas regain all or part of their vision within six months. Other times it's permanent.

Sadly, counterfeit eclipse glasses are being circulated. The safe ones must be marked as certified by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The glasses should say they meet "ISO 12312-2" safety standards. The glasses will look completely black when you look through them unless you are looking at the sun.Dark sunglasses and even welders glasses do not offer enough protection.

If you do not have proper eclipse glasses, you can safety view the eclipse through a do-it-yourself pinhole projector. Punch a hole in a piece of cardboard. Then tape a piece of foil over the cardboard. Using a pin or tack, poke a small hole in the foil over the hole in the cardboard. Hold the device perpendicular to the sun. View the image on the ground or a screen. Do not look directly at the sun through the pin-hole projector.

Safety experts are urging drivers to use extreme caution on the roads during the eclipse and refrain from looking at the spectacle in the sky rather than the road.

Read the original:
Eclipse Can Cause Blindness, Other Damage | CBN News - CBN News

The Department of Health (DOH) has encouraged all Filipinos to have their eyes checked in observance of Sight Saving Month, which was aimed at supporting efforts to reduce the prevalence of avoidable blindness.

The DOH spearheads the annual observance this month by virtue of Proclamation No. 40.

This years theme, Universal Eye Health: No More Avoidable Blindness, was designed to strengthen public awareness on the importance of proper eye care and promote the prevention of avoidable blindness, which is a serious public health issue of global magnitude.

Avoidable blindness left unaddressed, particularly for those who are blind or have severe visual impairment, results in reduced functional ability and loss of self-esteem and contributes towards the reduction of quality of life, the DOH said.

The disability from visual impairment has considerable economic implications with loss of productivity and income and can lead to poverty and social dependency, it said.

Early detection and preventive care can help keep our eyes healthy and avoid common causes of blindness, the DOH said.

According to a 2012 report from the World Health Organization, approximately 285 million people worldwide are visually impaired, with 39 million blind and 246 million with low vision.

Globally, cataracts remain the leading cause of blindness followed by glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration as the secondary causes.

In the Philippines, the estimated number of persons who are bilaterally blind is 332,150 of which 33 percent or around 109,609 is due to cataract, 25 percent (83,037) due to errors of refraction (EOR) and 14 percent (46,501) due to glaucoma. The rest are due to other eye conditions like glaucoma, retinopathy and maculopathy.

In addition to this statistics, the current number of persons with bilateral low vision is 2,179,733 of which 43 percent (937,285) is due to EOR, 34 percent (741,109) cataract, and the rest is caused by glaucoma and other eye diseases.

Subscribe to INQUIRER PLUS to get access to The Philippine Daily Inquirer & other 70+ titles, share up to 5 gadgets, listen to the news, download as early as 4am & share articles on social media. Call 896 6000.

See original here:
DOH tells Pinoys: Avoid blindness, have your eyes checked ... - Inquirer.net

Evils origins hit close to home.

Every monster has a mother. Every act of violence that has ever been perpetrated by one human being upon another or others every single one, minor or major has been done so by the son or daughter of someone, to the son or daughter of someone else. And in the eyes of a mother, our faults are opportunities, our flaws are our uniquity, and our damage is never our responsibility, it is the result of a world that doesnt understand us.

This is the narrative perspective that launches The Sunshine Boy, a three-minute, rotoscope-animated short film from writer/director Naaman Azhari. Inspired by real and all too-common events, the film consists of a mothers voiceover about her artistic, sensitive, and perhaps misunderstood son, a high school student. As she dotes on his distinctions, we see his side of these emotions and the horror they unleash.

The Sunshine Boy isnt the most novel narrative out there, but its not supposed to be, part of its point is how frighteningly regular such depicted events are. What is unique and captivating about the film is its perspective, one that shows us how a mothers love is unwavering, but also blinding.

Source: Short of the Week

Visit link:
Short of the Day: 'The Sunshine Boy' Reveals the Blindness Caused by a Mother's Love - Film School Rejects

Courtesy of "Flesh of my Blood"

A slate of short films depicting lead characters with disabilities has been making the rounds at film festivals worldwide, giving voice to a demographic mostly ignored in mainstream cinema and TV. Blindness, Annette Cyrs impassioned study of a painter discovering she will lose her eyesight made waves at the Palm Springs Intl. Shortfest this June, along with Mari Sanders documentary short 80% Disabled, which exposes what life is like for a handicapped filmmaker yearning to live independently.

SEE MORE: From the August 01, 2017, issue of Variety

Flesh of My Flesh, written and directed by award-winning South African filmmaker Matthys Boshoff, has screened at numerous fests, including the 2017 Nashville Film Festival. The film is a haunting, heartbreaking and sometimes humorous semi-autobiographical look at a married couple whose lives are devastated when their daughter dies in a car accident and the mother is left paralyzed from the neck down. In real life, Boshoff, raised in Pretoria, South Africa, was in a car accident at age 4 that took the life of his older sister.. His mother became a quadriplegic and his father her caretaker.

What was interesting to me, in the context of a romantic relationship, was what happens when you get committed to somebody with an able body and then suddenly life happens and youve got to deal with it, says Boshoff, whos currently at work on the feature-length version of the film. Where you often have the attention and the empathy and sympathy going towards the person who had the accident or has the disability, often its the caretaker who suffers the greatest psychological stress and is the most strained.

In her film Still Sophie, which also screened at Nashville and won best documentary at the Red Dirt Film Festival, filmmaker Caroline Knight wanted to explore the effects of aphasia, the impairment of language and communication due to a brain injury, usually a stroke, on the life of 19-year-old singer Sophie Salveson. With a run-time of seven minutes, the film, produced by Chad McClarnon, is a precise and inspiring look at the power of will and determination over medical diagnosis.

Shes so expressive and I still feel like I understand everything shes trying to say despite the aphasia holding back her words, says Knight, whose mother is Salvesons speech therapist. Shes still Sophie its all in the title. Shes still there and shes everything she was before the stroke. This thing has changed the course of her life, but shes still very much creative and bright and one of the funniest people I know.

Read the original post:
Filmmakers Strive to Raise Awareness of the Disabled in Entertainment With Fully-Formed Characters - Variety

When Maureen and Jay Neitz adopted an adorable, fluffy black puppy in the late 1980s, they had no idea how important she would be in making new discoveries about vision.

They were just looking for a dog who was size-appropriate for the small apartment they lived in as UC Santa Barbara PhD candidates. Eventually, the teacup Poodle they named Retina helped the couple prove that dogs see much more than just black and white, and that dogs color vision is similar to that of the 8 percent of the human population who are red-green colorblind.

Ten million Americans, most of them male, are affected with red-green colorblindness, a genetic trait carried on the X chromosome. People with this condition cant clearly see the difference between red and green. They often mistake green for white and red for brown or dark gray.

Colorblindness might not seem like a serious disability, but it causes unexpected, and sometimes tragic, problems for humans. For example, airline pilots must be able to differentiate between colors, which someone with red-green colorblindness cant reliably do. Color vision is, of course, crucial in being able to discern if a traffic light is red or green. According to Don Peters, a consultant to the biotech industry who has red/green colorblindness, Sodium vapor lights look a lot like red stoplights to me. Its confusing to drive in an area with these lights, especially at night. As a child, he had difficulties with color-related tasks: I can still hear my teacher asking me why I colored the tree red. I couldnt tell the difference.

Colorblind people miss a lot of detail that people with normal color vision take for granted: they might not see the lines on a map, or lettering printed in colors that seem bright to those with normal vision but blend in for them. This can be dangerous when reading traffic signs or medication labels. Jay Neitz pointed out that children who are colorblind often have trouble in school, and can be mistakenly diagnosed with learning disabilities or ADHD; in spite of these potential problems, schools do not test students color vision.

The Neitzes established that dogs see shades of yellow, blue and gray. Other colors, such as red and green, appear faded or indistinct. Jay Neitz had an aha moment when Retina could not find her orange ball in a green lawn. Sometimes the ball was right in front of her, but she would sniff around in the grass, trying to find it by smell. We realized that she simply couldnt see it, even though it was obvious to us, he said.

As UC Santa Barbara post-docs with degrees in biochemistry, molecular biology and biopsychology, the couple had access to a lab in which they could set up a testing area. I realized that I had the opportunity to find out, once and for all, what kind of color vision dogs really have. Jay built an apparatus that placed dogs in front of a screen with three lit panels. He trained the dogs to touch the screen with their noses when they saw a different shade. If the dog got it right, she would receive a cheese-flavored dog treat. In order to get the dog to touch the screen, Jay used peanut butter as an incentive. Once the dog mastered that part of the test, Jay no longer used the peanut butter.

Right away, Maureen and Jay discovered that, like people, dogs were good at figuring out shortcuts to getting a treat. In addition, About 30 percent of the time, the dog made a lucky guess, according to Maureen. The dogs attention spans were short, and on more than a few days, they just didnt feel like doing the tests. It took six months per dog to train them, Maureen said. In addition to Retina, the Neitzes used two Italian Greyhounds; like Poodles, they are small, intelligent, easily trained dogs. The dogs were treated very well, Maureen said. We had the utmost concern for their welfare.

In 1989, Jay Neitz co-authored Color vision in the dog, which was published in the journal Visual Neuroscience; the research paper confirmed that dogs do, indeed see more than black and white. That led to a years-long search for a cure for colorblindness in humans.

Continued here:
How Dogs Are Helping Researchers Cure Color Blindness | The Bark - The Bark (blog)

From the dawn of electronics, people have been tryingto merge electronics with our bodies in order to improve conditions thatcurrently have no cure andto go beyond our limits. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is now ready to back that up with big bucks.

DARPA has announced it plans to spend $65 million to create a brain-computer interface, the core goal of the Neural Engineering System Design program. The program will last for four years and willfund six different research teams. These scientists will work on LEDs that can be used to restore vision, a system to understand speech, and a holographic microscope to detect neural activity.

While these are all part of an exciting plan, it is important to remember just how ambitious it is. Even if the technology developed is as successful as one might hope, it would take years to perform clinical tests to guarantee that the tech is safe and reliable. DARPA wants the team to create commercially viable applications, but there are many obstacles to overcome.

The general idea is to create different versions of the same basic technology, an interface that can translate the electrochemical signals into electronic impulses and vice versa. Only in such a manner would it be possible to control potential sensory devices.

The researchers will tryto create a brain implant thatis at most a cubic centimeter (about two nickels stuck back to back) in volume. The volume requirements are sensible but not groundbreaking. Previous studies have shown implants that are minimally invasive.

The chip will have to be able to connect and communicate withup to a million neurons, and while that sounds impressive, we need to remember that the average human has about 86 billion of them.

Still, a technology that can interface with our neural electrochemistry can have a huge impact, even if it only interacts with a (relatively) tiny fraction of neurons. The implant can help bridge nerve connections, which means it might help people that have lost limb function or have a spinal injury.

Obviously, this is early work, but it is promising that research groups are committed to a tech that might make life easier for millions of people.

See the article here:
DARPA Aims At Curing Blindness And Other Conditions With Bioelectronic Interface - IFLScience

With only a 48-hour window of opportunity, how do you keep a child from going blind when there is a lack of eye surgeons with proper training? Thats where telemedicine technology and eye specialists come together.

Childrens Hospital Los Angeles is the largest pediatric multispecialty medical group in the United States. Children from around the world can receive specialized care from 564 physicians in any of 32 specialties and 31 other areas of complex conditions.

Recently, one group within Childrens Hospital Los Angeles looked at the rate of infant blindness in Armenia which was three times the rate of the U.S. and other Western countries and asked, How can we help? How could the medical group eliminate preventable blindness in Armenia and neighboring rural areas? And how could the medical group educate doctors in third-world countries about complex blinding diseases in a cost-effective manner without compromising care?

[Also:VA, Air Force forge telehealth partnership for critically ill patients]

Thomas Lee, MD, joined the Armenia EyeCare Project at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. He and a team of doctors traveled to Armenia to provide assessment, care and programming, and the need to train remote care teams became clear: There were not enough surgeons available with the specialized knowledge required to provide life-changing eye surgeries.

Another critical issue was that some of these sight-saving surgeries for premature infants with certain retinal conditions must take place within 48 hours of birth. The lack of trained surgeons meant many infants might miss their opportunity.

[Also:eClinicalWorks adds telehealth feature to mobile app]

So SADA Systems, a Microsoft partner, built a telemedicine system using Microsoft technology especially for Lee to reach out from L.A. to Armenia to stop infants from going blind.

Skype for Business along with a Polycom codec allowed us to be present virtually during the operation, Lee said. One of the primary obstacles to training surgeons in developing countries is the difficulty in getting the expertise to the trainee to properly supervise them during their actual operations. Historically this has required the expert to travel to the remote country and then assist the doctor directly.

These medical missions are very time-consuming, and unfortunately often need to be arranged months in advance, a period of time many patients do not have, Lee said.

By having a remote platform available, we were able to provide the supervision needed in a timely fashion for the patient without requiring the expert to disrupt their own practice, he explained.

Various elements of the telemedicine technology enabled Lee and team members to succeed at this medical procedure.

Historically, we have been limited in how the video signal is transmitted and brokered, Lee said. Encoding and compressing the signal has often relied on software compression performed in the OR before being placed on the wire. This results in compression and motion artifacts that cause signal degradation making it unusable from a medical standpoint.

Some of the more affordable hardware systems resulted in latency of up to 60 seconds as the streaming system would buffer the video before broadcasting to the remote expert, Lee explained. A dedicated hardware codec at both ends would solve this issue but required the remote expert to be at the hospital where the codec is present, and since Armenia was 12 time zones away, this posed a specific challenge, he added.

What was unique and novel about this solution was that SADA Systems reconfigured a Polycom codec to log directly on to Microsoft Skype for Business, he explained. The hardware compression resulted in a high-definition and high-frame-rate signal with none of the artifacts we had seen previously. Because this was being brokered by Skype for Business, the remote expert could simply log onto the video conference from home using a standard web browser.

What was even more important was that the signal could be multicast to multiple experts around the world. This was a fundamental change.

Where historically we could only have one expert training a surgeon, either in person or remotely, Skype for Business allowed us to crowdsource the surgical training to experts all over the world, Lee said. This changes the rules of the game. Experience that would normally take a trainee months to acquire through different experts can now be addressed in one operation. This really alters how we can approach a global problem through a disruptive platform to benefit children all over the world.

So how important is telemedicine technology to the future of healthcare? Very, Lee said.

In healthcare today, we are facing a crisis not just in cost but more importantly in access, he said. Telemedicine will allow us to address both of these issues by allowing subspecialists to partner with other providers in an efficient manner that can both increase access and reduce costs. The challenge is how to complete the proof of concept and then roll out the larger platform.

Twitter:@SiwickiHealthITEmail the writer: bill.siwicki@himssmedia.com

Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

See more here:
LA medical group uses telemedicine to fight child blindness in Armenia - Healthcare IT News

Fillers those line plumping and wrinkle-reducing injections (usually of hyaluronic acid) have gotten increasingly popular over the past several years. The quick, in-office procedure can deliver addictively good results without all the scariness that comes with full-blown cosmetic surgeries. But thats not to say fillers dont have serious risks... like blindness, apparently.

A recent study published in the Journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, looked at nine patients in South Korea who experienced blindness from fillers after receiving facial injections of hyaluronic acid.

One of the rare risks of having filler injections performed is that the filler material itself can get into and block a blood vessel, Joshua Zeichner, M.D., director of cosmetic and clinical research in dermatology at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, tells Allure. If that happens, the results can be devastating.Here's what goes down: The blockage can prevent the delivery of oxygen and other nutrients, which could have major consequences. If the skin is affected, scarring can develop. If the eyes are affected, it can result in blindness, Zeichner adds.

Naturally, the case study is scary enough to make you rethink booking that filler appointment. But before you totally freak out, heres what you need to know about the real risks concerning blindness from fillers.

First of all, this is super rare. For all the procedures involving fillers (about 2.6 million people got the needle last year alone, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons), theres only been a handful of reported cases of blindness. In the event that after a filler injection, you experience any significant, sharp pain, if the skin develops a purple, lacy, or dusky appearance make sure to call your doctor immediately, Zeichner says. Hyaluronic acid fillers can be dissolved, so if theres an issue, the faster you can do that, the better your chances of avoiding a serious outcome.

Secondly, where you get the filler matters. Certain areas are more at risk than others, Sejal Shah, M.D., a board-certified dermatologist in New York, tells Allure. The highest risk areas are the area between the eyebrows, the nose, and the nasal region. In those areas, neurotoxin injections (aka Botox or Dysport) might be the safer choice, adds Zeichner.

Finally, technique is key, so make sure you see someone who knows their stuff. Many of us do not inject fillers in high-risk areas and actually pull back on the plunger of the syringe before injecting to make sure that the needle is not placed within a blood vessel, Zeichner says. To ensure youre getting the best care, "make sure you are seeing a well-trained, board-certified dermatologist or plastic surgeon, who is thoroughly educated in facial anatomy and techniques for injecting different types of fillers, adds Shah. These experts will also be able to deal with any adverse effects ASAP.

The bottom line? Every medical procedure including the seemingly innocuous facial perk up you can get with a quick injection has risks. So make sure you know what they are going in. Before resorting to the needle, talk to your dermatologist about any weird side effects you might be at risk for and inject accordingly.

For more on fillers:

Original post:
Great, Well Apparently Facial Fillers Can Make You Go Blind - Allure Magazine

Sightings of a toxic plant which has left several children in the UK with third-degree burns this summer have been confirmed in the Somerset area.

Giant Hogweed can cause ulcers and blindness and has been called Britains most dangerous plant by some.

LATEST - Warning from mum about another dangerous plant after son picks up injuries at beauty spot.

The recent hot weather raised fears about the spread of the hazardous plant , as it thrives in warmer temperatures.

Distressing images show what can happen to children if they accidentally come into contact with the dangerous invasive species. Several youngsters were hospitalised in late June around the UK.

WARNING: Some images below graphically show Giant Hogweed injuries.

Areas with lots of countryside, such as our beautiful county, should be particularly aware of the risks.

Giant Hogweed verified in Somerset

Now a new app called Plant Tracker is recording confirmed reports of Giant Hogweed on a map of the UK, allowing those concerned to steer clear of some potentially risky areas.

Worryingly there are several dots on the map showing Giant Hogweed is in Somerset and the surrounding area.

The Giant Hogweed spots in or near Somerset confirmed so far are in:

Mudford (just north of Yeovil ) An area to the south of Wincanton , near the River Cale Farleigh Hungerford (north of Frome , south of Bath) London Road West in Bath Riverside Park in Bristol Down Road, north of Bristol Bristol and Bath Science Park, Bristol Just off the A35, near Wilmington, between Axminster and Honiton

Children taken to hospital

In late June media reports highlighted how children in the UK were especially vulnerable to the dangers of the plant.

Several children were hospitalised with third-degree burns after their skin was exposed to a stem.

Lauren Fuller, 10, from Thornbury, was building a den by a riverbank in Scotland in 2015 when she touched the invasive plant.

The image belows show how her injuries quickly became extremely severe.

WARNING: The below image graphically shows Giant Hogweed injuries and some may find it distressing.

An 11-year-old boy in Renfrewshire, Scotland, was hospitalised after touching the toxic plant in the park. Victims suffer horrific burn-like injuries when they make contact with it.

The boy was left with agonising blisters after he rubbed the plants leaves on a nettle sting, thinking they were dock leaves.

In 2015, four Bolton teenagers were treated in hospital for severe burns after touching giant hogweed.

Within 24-48 hours, rashes, burns and blisters may begin to appear. The toxins affect almost everyone but children are particularly sensitive.

Blisters caused by Giant Hogweed tend to heal very slowly as they can damage DNA, and severe blistering may re-occur for many years.

The blisters can also develop into phytophotodermatitis, a type of skin rash caused as a result of sensitivity to chemicals in certain plants and fruit which flares up in sunlight.

The best advice is simply - do not touch it.

River Trust expert Mike Duddy said: "If you dont know what the plant is, its exceedingly dangerous.

It is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most dangerous plant in Britain."

Government advice on Giant Hogweed says:

Contact with any part of this plant must be avoided as even minute amounts of sap can cause blistering of the skin following exposure to sunlight.

Its best left to the experts but if youre trying to spot the dangerous plant so you can avoid it, this info could help.

The Non-Native Species Secretariat says: When in full height it is difficult to confuse giant hogweed with any other plant. While still growing or stunted, possibly as a result of disturbance, it can be confused with some other native plants. The most likely species with which it might confused is hogweed.

Key differences between hogweed and giant hogweed include the height, width of stem, size of leaf, size of flower head and size of seed.

The map of the Somerset area we used above came from PlantTracker.

Thanks to PlantTracker we can see recorded sightings of the Giant Hogweed but walkers should beware that it's in lots of other places, too. It's probably impossible to report them all.

The PlantTracker project is a collaboration between the Environment Agency, Scottish Natural Heritage, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency & Natural Resources Wales.

The main aim is to locate incidences of a number of high priority invasive plant species.

There is currently a lack of information on exactly how serious the problem presented by invasive plant species really is.

With the public's help PlantTracker hope to build the most complete picture yet and provide the raw data to those that need it most in (almost) real time.

Continued here:
Sightings of 'most dangerous plant' which can cause ulcers and ... - Somerset Live

Diabetes patients who are also suffering from obstructive sleep apnoea may be at greater risk of developing a common form of eye disease leading to blindness, researchers found.

The findings showed that the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy was higher in patients with sleep apnoea (42.9 per cent) compared to those without sleep apnoea (24.1 per cent) - that causes snoring and interrupting breathing.

Further, it was also more common in patients with both Type 2 diabetes and sleep apnoea compared to those with only high blood sugar levels alone. Despite improvements in glucose, blood pressure and lipid levels, diabetic retinopathy remains very common, said Abd Tahrani from the University of Birmingham.

Importantly, patients with sleep apnoea and Type 2 diabetes may also be at an increased risk of developing advanced diabetic retinopathy over a period of three years and seven months. These patients may also not be aware of the onset of diabetic retinopathy and the disease could go undiagnosed for years, the researchers said.

For the study, published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the team involved 230 patients with Type 2 diabetes who were assessed for diabetic retinopathy using specialist retinal imaging, while sleep apnoea was assessed using a home-based multi-channel cardio-respiratory portable device.

At a follow-up appointment, on average 43 months later the patients with sleep apnoea (18.4 per cent) were more likely to develop moderate to severe diabetic retinopathy compared to those without sleep apnoea (6.1 per cent). We can conclude from this study that OSA is an independent predictor for the progression to moderate or severe diabetic retinopathy in patients with Type 2 diabetes, Tahrani said.

Follow @htlifeandstyle for more

Read the original:
Eye to eye: Diabetes, sleep apnoea combination may lead to blindness - Hindustan Times

In rural Uganda, people who are blind or visually impaired often go to the city to look for work. But jobs are hard to find, and many end up as street beggars.

Instead, Ojok Simon wants them to know about a way they can earn money without leaving home: beekeeping. Simon, 36, became visually impaired after he was severely beaten by rebels who came to his village when he was a child. He has been a beekeeper for 15 years, and in 2013 he co-founded Hive Uganda, an organization that teaches advocates for visually impaired people and teaches them to make a living raising honeybees.

This year, his organization will receive a boost: Simon is one of three winners of the first-ever Holman Prize, which The Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired in San Francisco.

Its like a blind Fulbright, said Will Butler, the organizations communication director, of the award, which gives up to $25,000 apiece to blind and visually impaired people seeking funding for ambitious personal projects.

The prize is named for James Holman, a 19th-century English navy lieutenant who lost his sight at 25. In those days, if a military man became blind, the usual thing was theyd go sit in a convent or church and pray for the souls of dead English soldiers and sailors, said Bryan Bashin, The Lighthouses CEO.

Holman didnt think that sounded like fun. So, at a time with people didnt even think that blind people could get out of the house, he began to travel, and he became the most traveled blind person of the 19th century, eventually crossing through Scotland and France, and across Siberia, Bashin said.

Another winner of this years prize, Penny Melville-Brown of Farnham, U.K., lost her sight while she was a commander in the British Royal Navy. Her project, Baking Blind, will take her around the world to cook with blind and sighted chefs - including stops in China, Australia, Malawi, and Virginia Beach, Virginia, where she hope to link up with some Navy veterans, especially blind ones, to share stories.

Along the way she will videotape her encounters and blog about her journey. Her goal, she said, is to show that blind people and other disabled people have got lots of get up and go and ability, and they are a great resource for the rest of the community, the rest of society, and particularly employers, to use better.

Melville-Brown was thrilled to learn she had won (My thinking is its a cross between the Paralympics and The Apprentice, with a whiff of the Nobel! she wrote to the organizers in an excited email). But she also said the honor comes with a great responsibility. Because I am sort of representing lots of blind people, and especially those who were candidates for the prize. Im sort of doing it on their behalf.

A third winner, Ahmet Ustunel, a San Francisco teacher and avid kayaker, will develop a guidance system to solo kayak 500 miles in different locations around the world, including crossing the Bosphorus Strait from Europe to Asia in his native Turkey.

Two-hundred and two applicants from 27 countries and 35 U.S. states submitted 90-second video pitches for their projects.

We were staggered by the amount of interest and the quality and diversity of the proposals, Bashin said. One of the biggest obstacles is our own perceptions of our capabilities, and part of the Lighthouses mission is to change perceptions of the abilities of the blind in all fields.

Winners will be flown to San Francisco and work with the project manager to refine their ideas. A year later, they will return to report on how they turned out.

In the Gulu district of northern Uganda, Simons organization has already taught 38 people to be beekeepers, using local materials to make beehives and learning how to understand bees behavior.

Ugandans prize the insects for their honey, their wax (used in soap and cosmetics), their propolis, and even their venom, which can be used to boost immunity. But much of the harvesting is done in the wild, which presents a challenge for the visually impaired. Hive Uganda teaches people to use frames and assess the honey harvest by feeling how heavy they are.

Winning the Holman will allow Simon to widen the scope of how many people he can help.

I feel that now Im going to be addressing the larger society to empower East Africa in general, he told the Washington Post. My dream is becoming reality, and that change that I wanted, I started feeling at my fingertips.

Read the original here:
Beekeeper, baker, kayaker don't let blindness stop the vision - Atlanta Journal Constitution

A undle of microwires developed by startup Paradromic to interface directly with the brain. Image: Paradromic

These days, it seems youre nobody if youre not working on a way to merge machines with the human brain. Earlier this year, both Facebook and perpetual moonshot-enthusiast Elon Musk announced plans for brain-computer interfaces that could allow us to read the thoughts of others and improve our capacity for learning. Today, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced plans to spend $65 million developing advanced neural implants that connect our brains to computers in order to treat sensory deficits like blindness.

The Neural Engineering System Design program gives us a peek into what sort of achievements might actually be plausible using neural interfaces. The program will fund six different research teams, including two that seek to restore vision using light-emitting diodes, one that plans to decode speech using neurograin sensors, and another that uses holographic microscopes to detect neural activity that could eventually replace lost vision, or act as an interface to control an artificial limb.

At the end of the four-year program, the goal is to have working prototypes capable of transmitting data between the brain and computers, but it will likely be a good deal longer before such devices are ready or commercial or clinical application.

It will be a long time before medical science allows us to grow new eyes or repair a broken spinal cord, but by linking brains to computers it will be possible to leverage digital devices to restore the functionality of damaged body parts, said Matthew Angle, whose company, Paradromics, Inc., received a DARPA grant. Angles company is researching how to use large arrays of brain-penetrating microwire electrodes to record and stimulate neurons, with the goal of building an implantable device to support speech restoration. His company aims to be in clinical trials by 2021.

Initially we are focused on what we call connectivity disorders, meaning illnesses and injuries that destroy or severely impair a persons sensory or motor connections to the outside world, he told Gizmodo. Looking forward, I imagine that neural prosthetics could also be used to treat certain neurological diseases.

Its not DARPAs first foray into brain-computer interfaces. The agency has already invested heavily in brain-computer interface technologies to do things like treat mental illness and restore memories to soldiers injured in war. (Those projects are still ongoing, but so far on track to meet research goals.) But the goalsand the technologyhere are a little different. Rather than seeking to impact one small region of the brain in order to affect a particular outcome, like treating PTSD, the agency hopes to develop a technology to communicate with more than a million of the brains 86 billion neurons at once, translating the brains electrochemical signals into ones and zeros that can be interpreted by a machine.

Such a feat would have countless therapeutic applications, but also significantly expand our understand of vision, hearing, and speech and eventually, yes, maybe even allow us to communicate telepathically.

At UC Berkeley, for example, a research team led by Ehud Isacoff plans to develop a holographic microscope that uses fields of light to detect and modulate the activity of up to a million neurons in the cerebral cortex. The team hopes it can create models that predict how the brain will respond to visual and tactile stimuli, then translate those models into patterns that might convey vision or movement to someone who had lost one of those senses with a brain implant.

The technical goal is to create a brain modem that can read the activity of a million identified neurons and write back to large numbers of them patterns of activity that simulate natural ones, Isacoff told Gizmodo via email.

Using optical imaging, he said, may be more effective than techniques like deep brain stimulation that rely on implanted electrodes to stimulate areas of the brain around them, allowing to scientists to target extremely precise regions. Within four years, he said, they hope to have a device that works in animals.

We hope that our device makes it possible to unlock the neural code of sensory perception, he said. Success would enable us to generate the proper patterns to reflect what is happening in the world to enable a blind person to see or someone with a prosthetic arm to control it better because of restored sensory feedback.

At Columbia University, a team led by Ken Shepard plans to create a prosthetic restoring sight to those that are blind, by layering a single, flexible circuit over the brain that could communicate wirelessly with a transceiver worn on the head.

The goal of this research is to push the limits on what is possible with brain-machine interfacesproviding a means to interact with brain circuits on a scale that has not previously been achievable, Shepard told Gizmodo.

The challenges, though, are many. How to make such a device survive inside the body? How to process the data? How to map signals from the brain and understand how they impact the brains complex wiring?

DARPAs goal is that all of the teams will eventually create technology with practical, commercial applications.

Angle, of Paradromics, cautioned that this does not mean we will all be reading each others minds anytime soon. Even twenty years out, he suspects we will still be puzzling over how to use this kind of technology to help people with physical and psychological illnesses. In the nearer term, though, the focus will likely be on disorders rooted in the brains inability to communicate with the body, like blindness and paralysis.

There are already enough medical applications to keep many companies busy for many decades, he said. We see a concrete and credible technical pathway for the blind to see and for people who cannot move to walk again. This has been a human aspiration for as long as written history, and I think the tipping point will come in the next decade.

Original post:
DARPA Is Funding Brain-Computer Interfaces to Treat Blindness, Paralysis and Speech Disorders - Gizmodo

Went in for eye surgery the other day, which reminded me of an old wheeze of a joke, which I told to people as they prepared the prisoner for execution: A man walked by the insane asylum and heard the inmates shouting, Twenty-one! Twenty-one! They sounded ecstatic and he stopped to have a look. He put his eye to a hole in the fence and they poked him in the eye with a sharp stick and yelled, Twenty-two! Twenty-two!

The sedation guy was busy and didnt laugh but the nurse did. She was an angel and how often do you get to meet one? She grew up on a farm in southwestern Minnesota, is the mother of two teenagers and a professional possessed of warmth and humor. She did the prep, slipped the IV in, ran through a battery of questions, and patted me on the shoulder about 27 times in the course of an hour. A lifelong reader/writer like me blanches at the thought of his eye being sliced while he observes up close. This womans ease and kindness changed everything. Every thing.

Of course the outcome depends on the ophthalmic surgeon, who is also a kind and caring woman, but by then I was sedated, mesmerized by bright lights. The procedure lasted an hour, and when I was back on my feet, a patch over the eye, woozy but ambulatory, I walked out into bright sunlight and into the world of the handicapped. It was not easy to figure out when to cross the street to my hotel. In the hotel hallway, I had to read room numbers up close, hoping nobody would suddenly open a door and find a tall man with an eyepatch peering at their peephole and call the police.

Back in the room, I hung up my jacket, opened my laptop and I couldnt see the keys that would increase font size to where I could read the text. I lay on the bed and contemplated the prospect of life as a man in a blur. I dozed. I turned on the TV. I couldnt watch it, only listen. I clicked around, hoping for a friendly voice, and everyone sounded hyped-up and weird, canned laughter, big carnival barker voices, big woofers and screaming meemies, and then I found a ballgame. Two men, talking nice and slow in level tones, describing actions taking place before their eyes. Players I didnt know playing games I didnt care about, but those were the voices of my uncles discussing cars, gardens, future construction projects, the secret of pouring concrete, and that was reassuring, to know that the country has not come unhinged.

Kindness and blindness, all in one day. Back to basics. I think kindness does not come naturally to men. We bark, we harrumph, but tenderness is a stretch for us. The grief-stricken mother lies in bed, keening, and her women friends take turns stroking her back, while the men sit stiffly in the next room, trying to make conversation.

Its a small thing, kindness, but when youre in the hands of a large institution with a bar code for identification, kindness feels like the key to civilization itself and the fulfillment of the word of the Lord. And the combination of kindness and the high-powered intellectual acuity of modern medical science is a miracle of our time. America is the land of second chances and thats what modern medicine has brought us.

I lay in the hotel room hearing my uncles discuss the price of feed corn and it occurred to me, not once but several times, that I am a fortunate man and thank you, Lord. Medicare A and B and a good group health policy and savings to cover any shortfall. The 23 million people who may lose their health insurance in the next few years if Congress does as the man wishes will face some high barriers between them and any sort of eye surgery. This does not come under the heading of Kindness.

Eighty percent of evangelical Christians who cast ballots last fall voted for the man, who seems as far from Christian virtues (humility, kindness, patience, etc.) as Hulk Hogan is from the Dalai Lama. These are people who pray for guidance. So apparently Jesus got the story wrong. The rich man came to Lazarus who was covered with sores and asked for a tax break and the rich man was rewarded and Lazarus went to hell. Do unto others as you are glad they dont have the means to do unto you.

Garrison Keillor is an author and radio personality.

2017, Garrison Keillor

Distributed by The Washington Post News Service with Bloomberg News.

Read the original here:
Garrison Keillor column: Blindness and kindness, all in one day ... - Richmond.com

NightstaRx has raised 39.5M that will go towards three clinical programs testing gene therapies for rare diseases that cause blindness.

NightstaRx is developing gene therapies for genetic retinal diseases that cause blindness, with technology from the University of Oxford. Now getting closer to the clinic, the company has closed a Series C round with$45M (39.5M) that will go towards progressing its pipeline.The fundraising was backed by existing investors Syncona, the VC arm of the UKs Wellcome Trust, and New Enterprise Associates (NEA), which were joined by two new names: Wellington Management and Redmile.

NightstaRx has announced the money will fund an upcoming Phase III trial with its lead candidate NSR-REP1 in choroideremia, an ongoing Phase I/II study in X-linked retinitis pigmentosa and a planned Phase I/II program for inherited macular dystrophy.All indications pursued by the company have no effective treatment approved.

The biotechs technology is based adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors that deliver functional genes to patients with mutations that affect their sight. The DNA is delivered via an injection under the retina as a one-time treatment.

NightstaRx lead candidate, NSR-REP1, delivers a copy of the REP-1 gene, which encodes a protein involved in absorbing nutrients. Mutations in this gene, located in the X chromosome, cause choroideremia, a rare disease in which the retina degenerates slowly over the years, eventually leaving patients blind.A previous Phase I/II trial with NSR-REP1 in six patients with choroideremia where only one eye was treated showed significant improvementin their vision three and a half years after receiving the therapy.

Gene therapy is particularly suited to treat the eye, where it can sustain long-lasting gene expression without inducing an immune response, which has led many companies to develop their own approaches for multiple diseases affecting this organ. One of the most advanced is Spark Therapeutics, in the US, which expects FDA approval for its lead candidate in retinal disease this year. A second candidate, SPK-7001, is in Phase I/II for choroidemia, where it might have to compete with NightstaRx.

In Europe, most efforts are found in France. From there, GenSight is running two Phase III trialsin the rare genetic disease LHON;Horama is in Phase I/II in another rare condition, LCA; and Eyevensys will soon start a first trial in uveitis with the first gene therapy that does not use viral vectors.

Images via GeK / Shutterstock; NightstaRx

Visit link:
40M in Series C for a British Biotech Treating Blindness with Gene Therapy - Labiotech.eu (blog)

"One of the biggest obstacles is our own perceptions of our capabilities, and part of the Lighthouse's mission is to change perceptions of the abilities of the blind in all fields." Bryan Bashin, CEO, The Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired

Instead, Ojok Simon wants them to know about a way they can earn money without leaving home: beekeeping. Simon, 36, became visually impaired after he was severely beaten by rebels who came to his village when he was a child. He has been a beekeeper for 15 years, and in 2013 he co-founded Hive Uganda, an organization that teaches advocates for visually impaired people and teaches them to make a living raising honeybees.

This year, his organization will receive a boost: Simon is one of three winners of the first-ever Holman Prize, started by The Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired in San Francisco.

"It's like a blind Fulbright," said Will Butler, the organization's communication director, of the award, which gives up to $25,000 apiece to blind and visually impaired people seeking funding for ambitious personal projects.

The prize is named for James Holman, a 19th-century English navy lieutenant who lost his sight at 25. In those days, if a military man became blind, "the usual thing was they'd go sit in a convent or church and pray for the souls of dead English soldiers and sailors," said Bryan Bashin, The Lighthouse's CEO.

Holman didn't think that sounded like fun. So, "at a time with people didn't even think that blind people could get out of the house, he began to travel, and he became the most traveled blind person of the 19th century," eventually crossing through Scotland and France, and across Siberia, Bashin said.

Along the way she will videotape her encounters and blog about her journey. Her goal, she said, is "to show that blind people and other disabled people have got lots of get up and go and ability, and they are a great resource for the rest of the community, the rest of society, and particularly employers, to use better."

Melville-Brown was thrilled to learn she had won ("My thinking is it's a cross between the Paralympics and The Apprentice, with a whiff of the Nobel!" she wrote to the organizers in an excited email). But she also said the honor comes with "a great responsibility. Because I am sort of representing lots of blind people, and especially those who were candidates for the prize. I'm sort of doing it on their behalf."

Two-hundred and two applicants from 27 countries and 35 U.S. states submitted 90-second video pitches for their projects.

"We were staggered by the amount of interest and the quality and diversity of the proposals," Bashin said. "One of the biggest obstacles is our own perceptions of our capabilities, and part of the Lighthouse's mission is to change perceptions of the abilities of the blind in all fields."

Winners will be flown to San Francisco and work with the project manager to refine their ideas. A year later, they will return to report on how they turned out.

In the Gulu district of northern Uganda, Simon's organization has already taught 38 people to be beekeepers, using local materials to make beehives and learning how to understand bees' behavior.

Ugandans prize the insects for their honey, their wax (used in soap and cosmetics), their propolis, and even their venom, which can be used to boost immunity. But much of the harvesting is done in the wild, which presents a challenge for the visually impaired. Hive Uganda teaches people to use frames and assess the honey harvest by feeling how heavy they are.

Winning the Holman will allow Simon to widen the scope of how many people he can help.

"I feel that now I'm going to be addressing the larger society ... to empower East Africa in general," he told the Washington Post. "My dream is becoming reality, and that change that I wanted, I started feeling at my fingertips."

See the original post:
Blindness does not stop this beekeeper, baker, and kayaker from expanding their vision - The Guam Daily Post

NightstaRx has raised 39.5M that will go towards three clinical programs testing gene therapies for rare diseases that cause blindness.

NightstaRx is developing gene therapies for genetic retinal diseases that cause blindness, with technology from the University of Oxford. Now getting closer to the clinic, the company has closed a Series C round with$45M (39.5M) that will go towards progressing its pipeline.The fundraising was backed by existing investors Syncona, the VC arm of the UKs Wellcome Trust, and New Enterprise Associates (NEA), which were joined by two new names: Wellington Management and Redmile.

NightstaRx has announced the money will fund an upcoming Phase III trial with its lead candidate NSR-REP1 in choroideremia, an ongoing Phase I/II study in X-linked retinitis pigmentosa and a planned Phase I/II program for inherited macular dystrophy.All indications pursued by the company have no effective treatment approved.

The biotechs technology is based adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors that deliver functional genes to patients with mutations that affect their sight. The DNA is delivered via an injection under the retina as a one-time treatment.

NightstaRx lead candidate, NSR-REP1, delivers a copy of the REP-1 gene, which encodes a protein involved in absorbing nutrients. Mutations in this gene, located in the X chromosome, cause choroideremia, a rare disease in which the retina degenerates slowly over the years, eventually leaving patients blind.A previous Phase I/II trial with NSR-REP1 in six patients with choroideremia where only one eye was treated showed significant improvementin their vision three and a half years after receiving the therapy.

Gene therapy is particularly suited to treat the eye, where it can sustain long-lasting gene expression without inducing an immune response, which has led many companies to develop their own approaches for multiple diseases affecting this organ. One of the most advanced is Spark Therapeutics, in the US, which expects FDA approval for its lead candidate in retinal disease this year. A second candidate, SPK-7001, is in Phase I/II for choroidemia, where it might have to compete with NightstaRx.

In Europe, most efforts are found in France. From there, GenSight is running two Phase III trialsin the rare genetic disease LHON;Horama is in Phase I/II in another rare condition, LCA; and Eyevensys will soon start a first trial in uveitis with the first gene therapy that does not use viral vectors.

Images via GeK / Shutterstock; NightstaRx

Here is the original post:
40M in Series C for NightstaRx to Treat Blindness with Gene Therapy - Labiotech.eu (blog)

If this year follows the past, there will be many preventable eye injuries and cases of blindness.

The American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) and all ophthalmologists, are urging people to attend public fireworks displays put on by professionals rather than attempt to ignite their own fireworks. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, more than 9,000 fireworks-related injuries are reported in emergency rooms each year. Of these, nearly 50 percent are head-related injuries and almost 30 percent of these are eye injuries. Twenty-five percent of fireworks-related eye injuries result in permanent vision loss or blindness. In addition, there will be injuries to hands, faces and other parts of the body.

The typical injured person is young: Children 15 years or younger account for 50 percent of all fireworks eye injuries in the United States, and one-third of all fireworks injuries in children younger than 5 are the result of sparklers, which can burn at nearly 2,000 degrees.

The AAO offers the following safety tips:

As parents and adults, we have an obligation to prevent much needless blindness or lessor eye damage by simply alerting young people and ALL adults as to the dangers of fireworks.

FRANK J. WEINSTOCK, MD, CANTON

Professor of Ophthalmology,

Northeast Ohio Medical University

Fellow of the American College of Surgeons

Follow this link:
Letter to the Editor: You can prevent blindness - The Repository - Canton Repository

Somewhere in an album at Mum's place there's a photo of me kneeling in front of George Pell as I'm confirmed an adult in the Catholic Church.

It was taken in 1994, when I was 11 years old.Pell was the local regional bishop, based in Mentone.I remember him speaking to the class beforehand about footy and the Richmond Tigers, about which I knew and cared little.

My real interests were in history and politics.The intersection of those topics with religion is what continued to fascinate me well into adulthood, even as my Mass-going waned.

I was fascinated by stories of the ALP Split, of Bob Santamaria and the Movement (some of whose principal figures lined up in the same parish each week to take communion).

I ended up writing a PhD thesis on a voluntary association of clergy known as the National Council of Priests, which sprang up in Australia in the aftermath of Vatican II and associated events such as the moratorium movement.The NCP is a moderately conservative group of men and it comprises about half of all the Catholic priests in Australia, including bishops.

It's had two principal aims during its nearly 50 years of existence: first, to unite the clergy during a period of rapid change and, second, to Australianise Catholicism to make it a religion of this land and its people, more so than a Roman branch office or, in Patrick White's words, an Ireland of the South Pacific.

Borrowing from CJ Dennis, I called that thesis The Sacramental Bloke.

Get the latest news and updates emailed straight to your inbox.

In researching the story of the NCP, it became evident that there were strong subterranean movements taking place within the church during the 1970s, eighties and nineties.

At one level, this coincided with broader changes in Australia that included women's liberation, gay lib, state aid for Catholic schools, no-fault divorce, decriminalised abortion, legislation for women's equal pay, the AIDS crisis and so on.

Pell is part of a movement within the church that views some of these developments as expressions of "modernism", which it regards with extreme suspicion.

That faction within the church has its roots in the 1940s and fifties, when Australia was in the midst of the Cold War and the great fight that was taking place in domestic politics was between Communists and anti-Communists for control of the ALP.

Such was the acrimony created by this movement that the Vatican intervened to sort out the situation in 1957, declaring that the church had no place in officially involving itself in electoral politics.

But significantly for this story, that movement never went away.

It just went underground, transmuting itself through various guises such as the National Civic Council, the Australian Family Association and the opinion pages of The Daily Telegraph.

For Catholics within those groups, and those who supported them, such as George Pell, the great test to be applied to any co-religionist during the 1980s and 1990s was fidelity to Rome.

At a time during which non-traditional practices of sex and gender had become visible and their supporters loud, the test for theological conservatives within the church was about how strongly one supported and promoted the Roman line: no to contraceptives in marriage, no to homosexuals in the priesthood and no to married clergy or women priests.

The great irony here is that facilitating a wider discussion of human sexuality in all its forms would have allowed for homosexuals and celibates (including priests) to raise their voices and to be seen as leading legitimate lives of their own choosing.

Instead, just as the first clerics were being charged with sexual abuse offences, Melbourne Catholics were dished up documents by Pell such as "Why Can't Catholic Women be Priests?" (1993).

At the time, a sympathetic bishop advised members of the NCP to refrain from responding to Pell's publication "as Bishop Pell does have a certain following".

In seemingly keeping a lid on any real discussion of sexuality in the church, it became easy for those of a traditionalist bent to associatehomosexuality with paedophilia, just as the rest of society started to associated celibacy with sexual abuse.

The net effect was to make all clergy seem aberrant and potentially dangerous.

There is a real danger here that if we remain ignorant of the way that Pell and his supporters responded to broader changes in church and society, we can become too smug about the position he now finds himself in.

We can continue to buy into the cheap notion that the church is some sort of evil institution staffed by a quackish bunch of freaks and weirdos.

Or we can start to have an open discussion about sexuality, gender and the abuses that humans continue to perpetrate on one another well beyond institutional settings.

We owe that to the many victims out there who do not have a royal commission on their side, whose attackers are going about their business as respectable citizens today, safe in the knowledge that they will probably never be brought to justice.

Dr Damien Williams is an adjunct research fellow at the Centre for Religious Studies at Monash University.

Originally posted here:
Denialism and blindness en masse - The Sydney Morning Herald

In rural Uganda, people who are blind or visually impaired often go to the city to look for work. But jobs are hard to find, and many end up as street beggars.

Instead, Ojok Simon wants them to know about a way they can earn money without leaving home: beekeeping. Simon, 36, became visually impaired after he was severely beaten by rebels who came to his village when he was a child. He has been a beekeeper for 15 years, and in 2013 he co-founded Hive Uganda, an organization that educates advocates for visually impaired people and teaches the sightless to make a living raising honeybees.

Ojok Simon, a beekeeper, co-founded Hive Uganda, an organization that teaches visually impaired people how to make a living raising honeybees. (The Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired)

This year, his organization will receive a boost: Simon is one of three winners of the first Holman Prize, given by the San Francisco nonprofit Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired. There were 202 applicants from 27 countries and 35 U.S. states who submitted 90-second video pitches for their projects.

Its like a blind Fulbright, Will Butler,the organizations communication director, said of theaward. The honor grantsup to $25,000each toblind and visually impaired people seeking funding for ambitious personal projects.

The prize is named for James Holman, a 19th-century Britishnavy lieutenant who lost his sight at age 25. In those days, if a military man became blind, the usual thing was theyd go sit in a convent or church and pray for the souls of dead English soldiers and sailors, said Bryan Bashin, the Lighthouses chief executive.Holman didnt think that sounded like fun. So, at a time when people didnt even think that blind people could get out of the house, he began to travel, and he became the most traveled blind person of the 19th century, evenventuring across Siberia, Bashin said.

Another winner of this years prize,Penny Melville-Brown of Farnham, Britain, lost her sight while she was a commanderin the BritishRoyal Navy. Her project, Baking Blind, will take her around the world to cook with blind and sighted chefs including stops in China, Australia, Malawi and Virginia Beach, where she hopes to link up with some navy veterans, especially blind ones, to share stories.

Penny Melville-Brown of Farnham, U.K., will travel the world cooking with other visually impaired and sighted chefs for her "Baking Blind" project. (The Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired)

Along the way she will videotape her encounters and blog abouther journey. Her goal, she said, is to show that blind people and other disabled people have got lots of get-up-and-go and ability, and they are a great resource for the rest of the community, the rest of society, and particularly employers, to use better.

Melville-Brown was thrilled to learn she had won (My thinking is its a cross between the Paralympics and The Apprentice, with a whiff of the Nobel! she wrote to the organizers in an email). But she also said the honor comes with a great responsibilitybecause I am sort of representing lots of blind people, and especially those who were candidates for the prize. Im sort of doing it on their behalf.

A third winner, Ahmet Ustunel, a San Francisco teacher and avid kayaker, plans todevelop a guidance system to kayak solo 500 miles in locations around the world, including crossing the Bosporus from Europe to Asia in his native Turkey.

Ahmet Ustunel, a San Francisco teacher and avid kayaker, will develop a guidance system to solo kayak 500 miles in different locations around the world. (The Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired)

We were staggered by the amount of interest and the quality and diversity of the proposals, Bashin said. One of the biggest obstacles is our own perceptions of our capabilities, and part of the Lighthouses mission is to change perceptions of the abilities of the blind in all fields.

Winners will be flown to San Francisco and work with aproject manager to refine their ideas. A year later, they will return to report on their efforts.

In the Gulu district of northern Uganda, Simons organization has already taught 38 people how to become beekeepersby using local materials to make beehives and learning aboutbees behavior.

Ugandans prize the insects for their honey, wax (used in soap and cosmetics), propolis (a resin used to close holes in their hives) and even their venom, which can be used to boost immunity. But much of the harvesting is done in the wild, which presents a challenge for the visually impaired. Hive Uganda teaches people to use frames and assess the honey harvest by feeling how heavy they are.

Winning the Holman will allow Simon to expand the number of people he can help.

I feel that now Im going to be addressing the larger society to empower East Africa in general, he told The Washington Post. My dream is becoming reality, and that change that I wanted, I started feeling at my fingertips.

See more here:
Blindness does not stop this beekeeper, this baker and this kayaker ... - Washington Post