Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Announces Vision Screening Program Sees 16 Million Children In 10 Years

- Milestone Honored on World Sight Day, Hundreds More to Receive Vision Screening at Event

BANGKOK, Oct. 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Johnson & Johnson Vision Care (JJVC) today announced that more than 16 million children in Asia have received free vision screening through Sight for Kids, a partnership program with the Lions Clubs International Foundation (LCIF) now marking its 10th anniversary.

In honor of this philanthropic milestone, Sight for Kids has arranged to screen hundreds of students on World Sight Day, October 11 at a school in Bangkok. This event is part of an effort to screen another 1 million kids in six Asia Pacific countries during 2012 alone.

Sight for Kids has screened children in China, India, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. It was established in 2002 to reduce visual impairment and disability in Asia through volunteer-directed vision screenings involving ministries of health, school districts, eye care professionals and hospitals along with Lions Clubs International volunteers and JJVC employees.

"Uncorrected refractive errors, which are easily corrected, are responsible for nearly half of all global vision impairment," said Wing-Kun Tam, Chairperson of LCIF. "On World Sight Day and every day, Lions and partners seek to raise awareness of blindness and visual impairment and provide much-needed eye care service to our communities. We're very proud of all we've accomplished together through Sight for Kids, one of our longest-running and widest reaching corporate partnerships. It shows what's possible when dedicated partners unite in service to eye care."

Sight for Kids was first launched in Korea and Thailand, and in its first year alone screened more than half a million children. Today, at 16 million children, it is equivalent to screening the entire population of London twice.(i)

To date:

• Nearly 600,000 children have been referred to physicians for further evaluation;
• More than 163,000 children have received glasses; and
• More than 76,000 children have been treated for various eye conditions.(ii)

"Gaining access to an eye screening early in life is critical since many vision-related issues can be addressed through preventative care," said Thibaut Mongon, President, Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Asia Pacific. "We are proud to help lift the barrier to vision screening for children in need and hope it will have a life-long impact for many of them."

An estimated 1.4 million children in the world are blind, and three-quarters of them live in the poorest regions of Asia and Africa, most lacking access to treatment for easily-treatable conditions.(iii,iv) Globally, uncorrected refractive errors (nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism) are the main cause of visual impairment in children and may result in lost education and employment opportunities, lower productivity, and impaired quality of life.(v)

Sight for Kids is one of the longest running and largest international school vision-screening programs that continues to operate as a public-private initiative across multiple countries, including developing countries. The program has trained more than 110,000 Lions, school teachers, and other volunteers to assist with vision screening and provide eye health education at 26,000 schools.

For more details about the Sight for Kids World Sight Day event, please visit www.lcif.org/sfk

About Johnson & Johnson Vision Care
Johnson & Johnson Vision Care is the world's leading manufacturer of disposable contact lenses. Anchored by its mission to bring healthy vision to everyone, everywhere, every day, the Company has set industry standards through innovative technologies and products. Its best-selling ACUVUE® Brand Contact Lenses launched as the world's first disposable soft contact lens in 1987, and since then the brand has introduced numerous first-to-market products. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, USA, Johnson & Johnson Vision Care has some 3,400 employees at offices and state-of-the-art research and manufacturing facilities throughout the world where it manufactures 2 billion contact lenses a year. The Company provides professional instruction through The Vision Care Institute™, a renowned program taught in 27 languages in 40 markets worldwide.

About Lions Clubs International Foundation
Lions Clubs International Foundation (LCIF) is the charitable arm of Lions Clubs International, the world's largest service club organization with more than 1.35 million members in 207 countries and geographical areas around the world. Established in 1968, LCIF has been preventing avoidable blindness on a global scale for more than 20 years through the SightFirst program. Lions are investing US$415 million in SightFirst and have restored sight to 30 million people worldwide. Learn more at www.lcif.org.

(i) World Gazette. World: largest cities and towns and statistics of their population. Retrieved September 7, 2012, from http://world-gazetteer.com/wg.php?x=&men=gcis&lng=en&des=wg&srt=npan&col=abcdefghinoq&msz=1500&pt=c&va=&srt=pnan

(ii) Sight for Kids Stats (2012, September). Provided to Johnson & Johnson Vision Care September 5, 2012.

(iii) World Health Organization. Prevention of Blindness and Visual Impairment. (2012, para. 2). Retrieved September 7, 2012, from http://www.who.int/blindness/causes/priority/en/index4.html.

(iv) Lions Clubs International Foundation. Sight for Kids. Retrieved September 7,2012 from http://www.lcif.org/EN/our-programs/sight/partnership-initiatives/sight-for-kids.php.

(v) World Health Organization. Vision 2020: The Right to Sight (2007, p. 22). Retrieved September 7, 2012, from http://www.who.int/blindness/Vision2020_report.pdf.