Wick opticians helps raise £73k to help Scotland’s premature and sick babies
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Specsavers customers in Wick have played a crucial role in raising £73,000 to help Scotland’s premature and sick babies, supporting an initiative launched last year by the opticians alongside Lady Sarra Hoy.
The funds have been donated to Simpsons Special Care Babies to buy a cutting-edge piece of equipment called a PanoCam Pro for the Simpson Neonatal Unit in Edinburgh.
Premature babies need their eyes checked regularly due to rapid changes in organ development, in what would have been the last three months of pregnancy, which can put them under a lot of stress – the PanoCam provides a much quicker and safer way to examine them.
To help raise the impressive total, the Wick store agreed to donate £2 from optical coherence tomography (OCT) scans – which can help detect treatable eye conditions such as diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration, and glaucoma – carried out at the end of last year.
Ian Morris opthalmic director at Specsavers Wick said: "We were inspired to do our bit for this amazing fundraiser after hearing the story of one of our colleagues in Scotland whose daughter was born at 24 weeks weighing just 1lb 15oz, and beat the odds thanks to the support of the neonatal unit.
"We are proud that the funds generated here in Wick with help from our customers will help to bring this cutting-edge equipment to a unit that helps babies from all over the country.”
When Specsavers Scotland launched the fundraiser in autumn 2021, it was part of a dual announcement which saw Bliss Scotland designated as the opticians’ Charity of the Year, to generate additional funds to support Scotland’s premature babies and their families.
Lending support at the launch announcement was Bliss ambassador Lady Sarra Hoy, a lawyer by profession and wife of cycling champion sir Chris Hoy, whose son Callum was born at 29 weeks back in 2014.
Reflecting on the success of the PanoCam fundraisers initiative, she said: “I want to thank Specsavers and all of their customers who have made this possible. What a fantastic achievement. It’s so rewarding for everyone involved to be able to see the reality of their donation, which will have a direct impact and positive outcome on babies and their families.”
MED Surgical, who supply the Visunex PanoCam Pro, usually charge £113,000 but generously contributed £40,000 to make the fundraising target of £73k more attainable.
For every seven babies born in the UK, one baby is born needing neonatal care – that equates to 100,000 babies every year.
Bliss is the UK’s leading charity for babies born premature or sick and champions the right for every baby born premature or sick to receive the best care. It achieves this by "empowering families, influencing policy and practice, and enabling life-changing research". Visit bliss.org.uk for more information.
