Canada’s only full-time mobile eye clinic ventured beyond Winnipeg for the first time this fall to bring comprehensive eye exams and glasses to kids in rural Manitoba.
Optician Sean Sylvestre and his team with the Mobile Vision Care Clinic visited Roseau Valley School in Dominion City last Monday, the last stop on a rural tour that brought them to Thompson, Brandon, and Selkirk as well.
The clinic has been on the go in Winnipeg for six years now, providing free eye exams and discounted or free glasses for kids in high-need populations.
The demand has been so high that it’s been difficult to expand beyond the Perimeter, Sylvestre says.
“As soon as people found out that we were doing this, we were getting asked to come out [beyond Winnipeg],” he says, explaining, though, that scheduling and travel costs made it difficult to meet those requests, until this year.
The clinic has grown significantly from the 50 school visits it did the 2017-18 school year.
“This year we will have 120 clinic days in over 100 different schools and provide comprehensive eye exam for up to 12,000 kids,” Sylvestre says. “Every child who needs glasses has access to them. We stock glasses at 65 per cent off. We’ve also donated $500,000 in glasses to students whose parents could not even afford the discount. And this is leading to some incredible successes in the classroom.
“Most kids who have been labelled ‘poor readers’ don’t have learning disabilities at all. They just can’t see the front of the room.”
The majority of the kids getting tested in these school clinics—about 70 per cent—are seeing an eye doctor for the very first time.
The program got its start in a conversation between Sylvestre and a friend who was a principal at a Winnipeg school.
“He was explaining how after hours he was running kids to clinics, but he could only take two or three a night,” Sylvestre shares. “He had a school of 350 kids.
“So we had a conversation and kind of talked back and forth about what they thought they needed. We put together a plan and pitched it to the Winnipeg School Division.”
The division jumped at the idea of bringing in eye exams for the students, and the mobile clinic was born.
“It’s just kept growing every year since then,” says Sylvestre.
While there are vision screening clinics in schools used to identify kids who may need to see an eye doctor for a proper prescription, Sylvestre notes many low income families don’t have the means to follow up. Manitoba Health pays for children’s eye exams, but that doesn’t cover the costs of transportation to a clinic nor the glasses themselves.
“The issue is even if they got identified, most of them didn’t have the capacity to take the student in or to pay for the glasses,” he says. “So what they really needed is something where they could get the actual prescription filled right there and make sure these kiddos get the glasses they need.”
The clinic works with their suppliers to discount the glasses and with an international vision foundation to donate them outright to kids when needed.
“We try to do everything for almost cost … just enough to pay everyone and keep the lights on,” Sylvestre says, explaining they don’t make any money off the sale of glasses.
Sylvestre notes they’re not in competition with other vision care centres that sell eyeglasses. Their target is solely underserved members of the community.
“We’re looking at those who struggle to gain access. This is an equity program,” he says. “We’re trying to break down those barriers … if we don’t come in, those students are just going without.”
The implications of that are long-reaching.
“If these kids don’t get glasses, they are three times more likely to fail at least one grade in school,” says Sylvestre. “What we’re doing is setting children up for success in school and adult life. Kids get a better education which leads to higher graduation rates, which paves the way to post-secondary education, better incomes, and taxpaying citizens. It is a win-win for all Manitobans.”
Sylvestre would love to see the clinic travel to more areas of the province, but it’s difficult given he’s the only optometrist on the six-person clinical team.
“Maybe there are optometrists out there close to retirement, maybe there are young optometrists who want to make a real difference to help our most vulnerable youth. We would love to see them join us so we can expand this to more communities.”
You can learn more about MVCC online at mobilevisioncareclinic.com
