Continuing on our journey to remain one of the largest specialist providers of community-based ophthalmology services in the UK, we are delighted to announce our newest Slough Cataract and Surgical Centre shall be opening next month! A convenient location just 5 minutes from Junction 6 of the M4, our newest centre can be easily reached from all surrounding areas. The address of our new centre is: Community Eyecare Cataract & Surgical Centre, 10 Windsor Road, Slough, Berkshire, SL1 2EJ. The vast range of ophthalmology and optometry services on offer at our new site include cataract surgery, glaucoma treatment, pre-cataract assessments, post-operative cataract assessments and many more. This site shall further support our NHS as we have built a strong reputation of quality, responsive and considerate patient focused care with 97% patient satisfaction and short waiting times of 1-2 weeks, depending on the condition being treated. To celebrate the launch, we would like to invite you to one of our CET Webinar events via Microsoft Teams. The event shall take place on Tuesday the 27th April 2021 at 7:00pm, running until approximately 8:00pm. The topic of the CET training will be ‘Post-Operative Cataract Management’ and attendance of the event will achieve 1 CET Point. Please click here to register no later than Tuesday 20th April and we will then send you an invite to attend the webinar on the day. For further information regarding the Surgical Centre in Slough or the CET webinar event, please contact our Engagement team on engagement@chec.uk. At Community Eyecare, we love hearing from our patients about the outcome of their procedures and the difference that it has made to their lives-as well as how the kindness of our staff has helped to put them at ease. This is the perfect reminder of why we do what we do. One of our consultants, Dr CT Pillai, recently shared some feedback that he had received from an 81-year-old healthy, active patient he recently treated: I saw an 81-year-old lady accompanied by her daughter at our medical centre. She has cancer in her left eye and gave me a clear history of seeing a red coloured shadow in it. I was shocked and shaken by her story of how she has received multiple cancer diagnoses over the years and had now received another. I was genuinely touched by her brave attitude. What touched me the most was that in spite of life being unfair to her, she has never once complained and instead continued to approach every day of her life positively. Dr C.T. Pillai Apart from being a doctor, sometimes one must behave like a fellow human being- and that is what I think I did by spending some time with her and her Daughter. After seeing the patient, she contacted CHEC and said: “I am extremely thankful for the kindness the consultant showed. I feel that if it had it not been for him, I would have been overwhelmed by the outcome. Instead, I was able to stay calm and I am sure that your consultant was the reason.” We would like to thank each and every one of our patients who continue to take the time out of their days to share their experiences with us. If you would like to leave us a review and share your thoughts on our service, visit Leave a review – Community Health And Eyecare Limited – NHS (www.nhs.uk) Last September, Community Eyecare spent some time working with AquAid Water Coolers on an initiative that involved building a water pump or “Elephant Pump” that would help to provide fresh, clean drinking water to communities across Africa. Having a pump on site would reduce the need for households having to walk an average of 7 miles every day just to retrieve water. This job usually falls to women and children in the community, with water often being gathered from contaminated sources. Yesterday, we received the news that our very own Community Eyecare Water Pump had been successfully built and installed by volunteers of The Africa Trust with assistance from local villagers in Manicaland, Zimbabwe, proudly displaying our company name alongside the message “Fill your cups with water and your heart with love”. Our pump has been built using locally sourced, readily available materials to extend its lifespan and allow locals to easily make repairs to it, should they be needed. The pump also has the capability of producing up to 10,000 litres of potable water per day to upwards of 300 people within the community. Now, families in Manicaland will no longer have to travel 7 miles to collect water as they are now able to utilise the pump to collect clean drinking water or water for productive uses, such as cooking and washing, every single day. Thank you AquAid for partnering with us on this, we are so proud to have had the opportunity to be involved with such a great cause. One of the most effective ways to end the cycle of poverty is to empower a community to care for itself. Part of this sustainable development includes providing access to clean productive water and decent sanitation. Thanks to your support, we have helped the Africa Trust build more than 5,000 water pumps, also known as Elephant Pumps, in communities across Africa, bringing life-giving water to thousands of people every day. – AquaAid Here, at Community Eyecare, we are aware that keeping our team hydrated will aid them to perform at their very best throughout the work day. As a result, we decided to invest in AquAid watercoolers from AquAid. Our unique relationship with AquAid has also given our company the opportunity to help those less fortunate than ourselves, because with each purchase an automatic donation is made to the Africa Trust. These funds are used to build ‘Elephant Pumps’ – a modified version of an age old Chinese rope pulley system. One such pump is currently being installed in Africa on our behalf and it will be a much needed source of clean and fresh drinking water for many. Our organisation’s name will be proudly displayed on our well and we look forward to adding some photos and letters of thanks from the villagers to our site in the near future. To date AquAid have built over 8,000 such Elephant Pumps across parts of Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe; and have donated in excess of £16 million to charity. To find out more, you can visit their website: www.aquaidwatercoolers.co.uk It has been 6 months already since COVID took hold in the UK. Whilst we managed the initial uncertainty with a period of lockdown, case numbers are rising once again. This will translate in the next few weeks to affect the elderly, with winter 2020 becoming one of the toughest in history for the health service and UK. This round of infections has been driven by the young and fuelled by evening night life in the UK. Hence, it will not be long before there is talk of a second lockdown, yet this may not be to the same calibre as last time. Consequently, it is important to consider some aspects of your business to keep functional; this will undoubtedly cause complications, where staffing levels will be required to fluctuate at short notice. Now that children have returned to school, it is likely that whole year groups will need to self-isolate, which will also cause their parents to take time off to look after them, whilst frontline workers may also be forced to self-isolate at short notice if they begin to display symptoms. Similarly, our actions outside of the workplace remain equally as important to prevent the spread of the virus, therefore we would still encourage you to listen to government advice to wear a face mask, sanitise your hands regularly and maintain 2m distance. At Community Eyecare, whilst regularly adhering to all government guidelines, we have also made contingency plans internally to ensure that we can remain business as usual as best as possible by having the correct plans in place and utilising our own stock of testing kits that provide results within 20 minutes. Please do make sure you are all ready for the second wave. For further information on how to prepare against rising cases of coronavirus, please refer to the latest government guidelines at www.gov.uk/coronavirus. Updated Information for the public from the Department of Health and Social Care on the outbreak of coronavirus, including the current situation in the UK and information about the virus and its symptoms. Join us in supporting Galloways and go Bright for Sight on 7th Feb. On Friday 7th February, Community Health and Eyecare will be supporting Galloways Society for the Blind by going “Bright for Sight”. Since 1867 when the charity was first established, Galloways has evolved to provide a range of services that support over 7,000 blind and partially sighted people across the Lancashire and Sefton area. Here at Community Health and Eyecare, we will raise money throughout our “Bright for Sight” event by holding a raffle, a Bright Bake Off and all be wearing bright coloured clothes for the event, as bright colours are easiest for someone with a visual impairment to see. It is a simple, fun and effective way for us to support Galloway’s and help to continue our work with blind and partially sighted people. we hope that our fundraising efforts can raise enough money for further research, equipment and resources that help Galloways in delivering vital support to blind and partially sighted people in the local community. The UK’s leading sight loss charity- Fight for Sight, launched its new campaign earlier this month, raising awareness of eyesight issues by sharing stories of people affected by sight loss. In Fight for Sights own words, approximately 20% of people will experience sight degeneration or impairment throughout their lifetime, hence the “20 stories for 2020” campaign aims to share the first-hand, personal impact that sight loss is having daily in numerous lives. This also features the story of 15-year-old Rose Roberts, who was diagnosed with Stargadt macular dystrophy when she was seven years old. Speaking about her sight loss, Rose said: “When suffering from eye conditions it’s not only your vision that’s impaired, but also your ability to live your life easily”. In doing so, the campaign hopes to deliver a clear message- that in taking eyecare seriously and with continued research into eyecare, patient wellbeing can be significantly improved.