Andrews – The Lions Club of Andrews held a hearing and vision screening Friday at West End Plaza.
Bryan Hoover, the Mobile Screening Unit coordinator for the Lions Foundation of North Carolina, said this is the 14th year for the mobile truck unit to visit the Valley.
“This is the foremost way to assess overall health, by viewing the eye and examining the blood vessels without any invasive measures or procedures,” Hoover said.
“Lions provides routine care for vision, but it goes beyond that with even a simple screening. Overall health can be best evaluated and assessed with the screening of the eyes because of the ability to detect problems including susceptibility of heart attacks related to high blood pressure or other related diseases such as diabetes, and apart from detecting cancer or glaucoma or even macular degeneration, this is the front line of a host of wellness detections.”
Dr. Lynn Taylor is also at that front line of assessment. She said this is her 15th year volunteering her services for the screenings, apart from alternating years with her husband, Dr. Jeff Taylor, of their local joint practice.
“We do this to be of service to the community,” she said of the duo’s involvement, which included another five years before the local unit came to town annually.
“While these are only screenings, we are able to offer referrals for individuals to obtain prescriptions for glasses and even other health issues. We can set up appointments based on what we find in the screenings and go from there for each case,” Taylor said.
She gave an example of a local man who attended a mobile screening and was found to have debilitating cataracts. He was “essentially blind, and yet no one knew the extent of it” as the man had no insurance and hadn’t been seen or treated by any means for years.
“In that instance, we were actually able to help him procure funds for his immediate cataract surgery through an organization called Services for the Blind,” Taylor said. “With that help and surgery he was able to recover his eyesight to be 20/20. It’s one of our better success stories.”
Citing other statistics, Lions member and volunteer Eric Reese, pastor at Robbinsville United Methodist Church, said around 17% of elementary school children had some sort of eyesight difficulty when screening results were tallied in the last school year.
Reese said the state mandates elementary school-age children be screened in odd-numbered years – including grades 1, 3, 5, and 7. Hoover added that Lions Clubs provide that support to alleviate school systems, like in neighboring Graham County, from providing the service to bog down each location with the bureaucracy surrounding facilitating health screenings for student populations.
“We used to see around 10-15%, but these numbers keep rising, so we have to keep providing our services to help children through our ‘kid-sight’ mobile units to reach underserved and deserving populations, particularly in western North Carolina,” Hoover said. “Statewide, since 2020 we’re seeing upwards of 30 percent of children who have some kind of vision impairment or need some supplement or improvement in the way of glasses or other support.”
Friday’s screenings serviced more than 50 individuals who attended the free event.
Also in attendance were several volunteers from Lions Clubs in surrounding areas, including Blairsville, Ga., and Robbinsville. While many local charters have closed in recent years, members are still willing to help the Andrews club.
Details: Visit lionsclubs.org.