Richmond, TX (January 9. 2006) Jack Thurmond, M.D. has accepted on behalf of the Kerrville, Texas Morning Rotary Club, an offer from CYNACON/OCuSOFT® to have its program for the lending of ophthalmic instruments for medical mission trips displayed on OCuSOFT’s website.
Dr. Thurmond is a retired ophthalmologist and a former consultant to CYNACON/OCuSOFT® .

One major aim of Rotary International is to reduce the enormity of avoidable world blindness. In this world there are 40 to 50 million blind people with some degree of visual handicap. This is a total of approximately 200 million people—an astounding number; especially when many of these cases can be corrected or cured, yet go without help. Eighty to ninety percent of these people live in developing countries.

There are a number of medical eye mission projects throughout the world, which treat the world’s million blind and visually handicapped. Often many of these missions are shorthanded due to the lack of trained personnel and adequate equipment.

To help alleviate this problem and to encourage more volunteering from professionals, the Kerrville, Texas Morning Rotary Club, working with Dr. Thurmond, has started a program whereby it will lend expensive portable eye equipment to medical eye mission projects which have qualified eye professionals to use and care for the equipment.

At the present time instruments that are available for loan include a Nikon Retinomax auto refractor, a portable Clement-Clark slit lamp, a Keeler magnifying surgical loupe, a Tono Pen applanation tonometer, a hand-held Heine slip lamp and various smaller hand-held instruments. In addition, a Keeler Indirect Ophthalmoscope, a Kova portable slit lamp and a W.A. Panophthalmoscope. There is also a surgical operating microscope and an A-Scan.

The equipment loan will be on the basis of the time of application. There will be no charge except for transportation from Kerrville, Texas. The Rotary group asks only that the equipment be responsibly cared for and returned in the same condition as received.

Dr. Thurmond notes an estimated 7 million people become blind each year. Every 5 seconds one person in this world goes blind. One child goes blind every minute. Dr. Thurmond has indicated, “We intend to reduce these numbers by encouraging more participation of health care professionals in volunteering their services and staffing these important short-term eye mission projects. It is our hope that this loan program will stimulate more Rotarian participation in this endeavor via the Rotary way of putting service above self”. The Kerrville, Texas Rotary Club is pleased to be part of Rotary International’s missions of reducing avoidable world blindness.

Nat Adkins, Chairman of CYNACON/OCuSOFT® would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Thurmond for their friendship and for Dr. Thurmond’s continuing care and concern for the less fortunate. Parties interested in the program are requested to contact the Kerrville, Texas Rotary Club for an application at the address listed below:

Kerrville, Texas Rotary Club
Morning Foundation
206 Spring Mill Drive, Kerrville, Texas 78028
Phone: 830-896-0226

In addition, if anyone would like CYNACON/OCuSOFT® to assist by placing information about a Medical Eye Mission Project on OCuSOFT’s website, please contact:

Troy Smith, Vice President of Sales
Phone: 800.233.5469; 281.342.3350
Email: tsmith@ocusoft.com